A Certain Scientific :s
by CesarBorgia
Summary: "You really think that?" Touma sat up and pressed his lips against my hair. "'Cause, frankly, the way I see it, you and me? Inevitable. Let's say we didn't get stuck in those god-awful camps—no, just listen. I'm going to tell you the amazing story of us."
1. Prolog

The story and the characters do not belong to me. I was just thinking about my favorite book and my favorite anime and wanted someone to tell me that this combination is badass.

Toaru majutsu no index written by Kazuma Kamachi

And my favorite book 'The Darkests minds' (The darkest minds never fade in the afterlight) by Alexandra Bracken

PROLOGUE

WHEN THE CAPACITY DOWN WENT OFF, we were in the Garden, pulling weeds.

I always reacted badly to it. It didn't matter if I was outside, eating in the Mess Hall, or locked in my cabin. When it came, the shrieking tones blew up like a pipe bomb between my ears. Other girls at Tokiwadai could pick themselves up after a few minutes, shaking off the nausea and disorientation like the loose grass clinging to their camp uniforms. But me? Hours would pass before I was able to piece myself back together.

This time should have been no different.

But it was.

I didn't see what had happened to provoke the punishment. We were working so close to the camp's electric fence that I could smell the singed air and feel the voltage it shed vibrating in my teeth. Maybe someone got brave and decided to step out of the Garden's bounds. Or maybe, dreaming big, someone fulfilled all our fantasies and threw a rock at the head of the nearest Anti-skins soldier. That would have been worth it.

The only thing I knew for certain was that the overhead speakers spurted out two warning blares: one short, one long. The skin on my neck crawled as I leaned forward into the damp dirt, hands pressed tightly against my ears, shoulders tensed to take the hit.

The sound that came over the speakers wasn't really capacity down. It wasn't that weird buzz that the air sometimes takes on when you're sitting alone in silence, or the faint hum of a computer monitor. To the government and its Department of Esper Youth, it was the lovechild of a car alarm and a dental drill, turned up high enough to make your ears bleed.

Literally.

The sound ripped out of the speakers and shredded every nerve in my body. It forced its way past my hands, roaring over the screams of a hundred teenage freaks, and settled at the center of my brain, where I couldn't reach in and rip it out.

My eyes flooded with tears. I tried to ram my face into the ground—all I could taste in my mouth was blood and dirt. A girl fell forward next to me, her mouth open in a cry I couldn't hear. Everything else faded out of focus.

My body shook in time with the bursts of static, curling in on itself like an old, yellowing piece of paper. Someone's hands were shaking my shoulders; I heard someone say my name-Mikoto—but I was too far gone to respond. Gone, gone, gone, sinking until there was nothing, like the earth had swallowed me up in a single, deep breath. Then darkness.

And silence.


	2. Chapter 1

ONE

RUIKO SATEN WAS THE FIRST TO DIE.

The first in my fourth grade class, at least. I m sure that by then, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of kids had already up and gone the same way she had. People were slow to piece it all together or, at least, they had figured out the right way to keep us in the dark long after kids started dying.

When the deaths finally came to light, my elementary school put a strict ban on teachers and staff talking to us about what was then called Kurozuma s Disease, after Kurozuma Wataru, the first kid known to have died of it. Soon, someone somewhere decided to give it a proper name: Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration IAAN for short. And then it wasn t just Kurozuma s disease. It was all of ours.

All the adults I knew buried the knowledge beneath lying smiles and hugs. I was still stuck in my own world of sunshine, ponies, and my race car collection. Looking back, I couldn t believe how naive I was, just how many clues I missed. Even big things like when my dad, a cop, started working longer hours and could barely stand to look at me when he finally did come home. My mom started me on a strict vitamin regimen and refused to let me be alone, even for a few minutes.

On the other hand, my parents were both only children. I didn t have any dead cousins to send up red flags, and my mom s refusal to let my dad install a soul-sucking vortex of trash and mindless entertainment that thing commonly known as a television meant that no scary news broadcasts rocked my world. This, combined with the CIA-grade parental controls set up on our Internet access, pretty much ensured I d be far more concerned with how my stuffed animals were arranged on my bed than the possibility of dying before my tenth birthday.

I was also completely unprepared for what happened on the fifteenth of September.

It had rained the night before, so my parents sent me to school wearing red galoshes. In class, we talked about dinosaurs and practiced cursive before Mrs. Yoshikawa dismissed us for lunch with her usual look of relief.

I remember every detail of lunch that day clearly, not because I was sitting across from Saten at the table, but because she was the first, and because it wasn t supposed to happen. She wasn t old like Grandpops had been. She didn t have cancer like Mom s friend Shinka. No allergies, no cough, no head injury nothing. When she died, it came completely out of the blue, and none of us understood what it meant until it was too late.

Saten was locked in deep debate about whether a fly was trapped inside her Jell-O cup. The red mass shivered as she waved it around, inching out over the edge of the container when she squeezed it a bit too tight. Naturally, everyone wanted to give their opinion on whether it was a fly or a piece of candy Saten had pushed in there. Including me.

I m not a liar, Saten said. I just

She stopped. The plastic cup slipped from her fingers, hitting the table. Her mouth was open, eyes fixed on something just beyond my head. Saten s brow was furrowed, almost as if she was listening to someone explain something very difficult.

Saten-san? I remember saying. Are you okay?

Her eyes rolled back, flashing white in the second it took for her eyelids to droop down. Saten let out a small sigh, not even strong enough to blow away the strands of black hair stuck to her lips.

All of us sitting nearby froze, though we must have had the same exact thought: she s fainted. A week or two before, Kazari Uiharu had passed out on the playground because, as explained, she didn t have enough sugar in his system something stupid like that.

A noon aide rushed over to the table. She was one of four old ladies with white visors and whistles who rotated lunch and playground duty during the week. I have no idea if she had any medical certifications beyond a vague notion of CPR, but she pulled Saten s sagging body to the ground all the same.

She had a rapt audience as she pressed her ear to Saten s hot pink T-shirt, listening for a heartbeat that wasn t there. I don t know what the old lady thought, but she started yelling, and suddenly white visors and curious faces circled in on us. It wasn t until Akemi nudged Saten s limp hand with his sneaker that any of us realized she was dead.

The other kids started screaming. One girl, Mako, was crying so hard she couldn t breathe. Small feet stampeded toward the cafeteria door.

I just sat, surrounded by abandoned lunches, staring at the cup of Jell-O and letting terror crawl through me until my arms and legs felt like they would be frozen to the table forever. If the school s security officer hadn t come and carried me outside, I don t know how long I would ve stayed there.

Saten is dead, I was thinking. Saten is dead? Saten is dead.

And it got worse.

A month later, after the first big waves of deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a five-step list of symptoms to help parents identify whether their kid was at risk for ESPER. By then half my class was dead.

My mom hid the list so well that I only found it by accident, when I climbed on top of the kitchen counter to look for the chocolate she kept hidden behind her baking supplies.

HOW TO IDENTIFY IF YOUR CHILD IS AT RISK, the flyer read. I recognized the flaming orange shade of the paper: it was the sheet Mrs. Port had sent home with her few remaining students days before. She had folded it twice and fastened it with three staples to prevent our reading it. TO THE PARENTS OF RUBY ONLY was written on the outside and underlined three times. Three times was serious. My parents would have grounded me for opening it.

Luckily for me, it was already open.

Your child suddenly becomes sullen and withdrawn, and/or loses interest in activities they previously enjoyed.

S/he begins to have abnormal difficulty in concentrating or suddenly becomes hyper-focused on tasks, resulting in s/he losing track of time and/or neglecting him/herself or others.

S/he experiences hallucinations, vomiting, chronic migraines, memory loss, and/or fainting spells.

S/he becomes prone to violent outbursts, unusually reckless behavior, or self-injury (burns, bruising, and cuts that cannot be explained).

S/he develops behaviors or abilities that are inexplicable, dangerous, or cause you or others physical harm.

IF YOUR CHILD DEMONSTRATES ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, REGISTER HIM/HER AT AND WAIT TO BE CONTACTED ABOUT THE LOCAL HOSPITAL TO WHICH S/HE SHOULD BE TAKEN.

When I finished reading the flyer, I folded it back up neatly, put it exactly where I found it, and threw up in the sink.

Grams phoned later that week, and in her usual to-the-point-Grams way explained everything to me. Kids were dying left and right, all about my age. But the doctors were working on it, and I wasn t supposed to be afraid, because I was her granddaughter, and I would be fine. I should be good and tell my parents if I felt anything weird, understand?

Things turned from bad to terrifying very fast. A week after three of the four kids in my neighborhood were buried, the president made a formal address to the nation. Mom and Dad watched the live stream on the computer, and I listened from outside the office door.

My fellow citizens, President Aleister began. Today we face a devastating crisis, one that threatens not only our children s lives, but the very future of our great nation. May it comfort you to know that in our time of need, we in tokyo are developing programs, both to support the families affected by this horrid affliction and the children blessed enough to survive it.

I wish I could have seen his face as he spoke, because I think he knew he must have that this threat, the crimp in our supposedly glorious future, had nothing to do with the kids who had died. Buried underground or burned into ash, they couldn t do anything but haunt the memories of the people who had loved them. They were gone. Forever.

And that symptoms list, the one that was sent home folded and stapled by teachers, which was aired a hundred times over on the news as the faces of the dead scrolled along the bottom of the screen? The government was never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind.

They were afraid of us the ones who lived.


	3. Chapter 2

TWO

IT RAINED THE DAY they brought us to Tokiwadai, and it went on to rain straight through the week, and the week after that. Freezing rain, the kind that would have been snow if it had been five degrees colder. I remember watching the drops trace frantic paths down the length of the school bus window. If I had been back at home, inside one of my parents cars, I would have followed the drops swerving routes across the cold glass with my fingertips. Now, my hands were tied together behind my back, and the men in the black uniforms had packed four of us to a seat. There was barely room to breathe.

The heat from a hundred-odd bodies fogged the bus windows, and it acted like a screen to the outside world. Later, the windows of the bright yellow buses they used to bring kids in would be smeared with black paint. They just hadn t thought of it yet.

I was closest to the window on the five-hour drive, so I could make out slivers of the passing landscape whenever the rain let up for a bit. It all looked exactly the same to me restaurants, leisure centers, hotels and convention centers and mountains. We could have still been in Kanagawa, for all I knew. The girl sitting next to me, the one that would later be classified level 2, seemed to recognize a sign at one point because she leaned over me to get a better look. She looked a little familiar to me, like I had seen her face from around my town, or she was from the next one over. I think all of the kids with me were from Kanagawa, but there was no way to be sure, because there was only one big rule: and that was Silence.

After they had picked me up from my house the day before, they'd kept me, along with the rest of the kids, in some kind of warehouse overnight. The room was washed in unnatural brightness; they sat us in a cluster on the dirty cement floor, and pointed three floodlights toward us. We weren't allowed to sleep. My eyes were watering so badly from the dust that I couldn't see the clammy, pale faces around me, let alone the faces of the soldiers who stood just beyond the ring of lights, watching. In some weird way, they ceased to be whole men and women. In the gray haze of half sleep, I processed them in small, terrifying pieces: the gasoline reek of shoe polish, the creak of stiff leather, the twist of disgust on their lips. The tip of a boot as it dug into my side, forcing me back awake.

The next morning, the drive was completely silent except for the soldiers' radios and the kids that were crying toward the back of the bus. The kid sitting at the other end of our seat wet his pants, but he wasn't about to tell that to the red-haired Anti-skin standing beside him. She had slapped him when he complained he hadn't eaten anything all day.

I flexed my bare feet against the ground, trying to keep my legs still. Hunger was making my head feel funny, too, bubbling up every once in a while to overwhelm even the spikes of terror shooting through me. It was hard to focus, and harder to sit still; I felt like I was shrinking, trying to fade back into the seat and disappear completely. My hands were starting to lose feeling after being bound in the same position for so long. Trying to stretch the plastic band they'd tightened around them did nothing but force it to cut deeper into the soft skin there.

Anti-Skin Forces—that's what the driver of the bus had called himself and the others when they collected us from the warehouse. You are to come with us on authority of the Anti-Skin Forces commander, Kihara Gensei. He held up a paper to prove it, so I guess it was true. I had been taught not to argue with adults, anyway.

The bus took a deep dip as it pulled off the narrow road and onto a smaller dirt one. The new vibrations woke whoever had been lucky or exhausted enough to fall asleep. They also sent the black uniforms into action. The men and women stood straighter, and their attention snapped toward the windshield.

I saw the towering fence first. The darkening gray sky cast everything in a moody, deep blue, but not the fence. It was glowing silver as the wind whistled through its open pockets. Just below my window were dozens of men and women in full uniform, escorting the bus in at a brisk jog. The Anti-SKs in the control booth at the gate stood and saluted the driver as he navigated past them.

The bus lurched to a stop, and we were all forced to stay deathly still as the camp gate slid shut behind us. The locks cracked through the silence like thunder as they came together again. We were not the first bus through—that had come a year before. We were not the last bus, either. That would come in three more years, when the camp's occupancy maxed out.

There was a single breath of stillness before a soldier in a black rain poncho rapped on the bus door. The driver reached over and pulled the lever—and ended anyone's hope that this was a short pit stop.

The Anti-skin was an enormous man, the kind you'd expect to play an evil giant in a movie, or a villain in a cartoon. He kept his hood up, masking his face, hair, and anything that would have let me recognize him later. I guess it didn't matter. He wasn't speaking for himself. He was speaking for the camp.

"You will stand and exit the bus in an orderly fashion," he yelled. The driver tried to hand him the microphone, but the soldier knocked it away with his hand. "You will be divided into groups of ten, and you will be brought in for testing. Do not try to run. Do not speak. Do not do anything other than what is asked of you. Failure to follow these instructions will be met with punishment."

At ten, I was one of the younger kids on the bus, though there were certainly a few kids younger. Most seemed to be twelve, even thirteen. The hate and mistrust burning in the soldiers' eyes might have shrunken my spine, but it only sparked rebellion in the older kids.

"Go screw yourself!" someone yelled from the back of the bus.

We all turned at once, just in time to see the Anti-skin with the flaming red hair launch the butt of her rifle into the teenage girl's mouth. She let out a shriek of pain and surprise as the soldier did it again, and I saw a faint spray of blood burst from his mouth when she took his next, angry breath. With his hands behind his back, there was no way she could block the attack. She just had to take it.

They began moving kids off the bus, one seat of four at a time. But I was still watching that kid, the way she seemed to cloud the air around her with silent, toxic fury. I don't know if she felt me staring, or what, but the girl turned around and met my gaze with his starry gold eyes. She nodded at me, like an encouragement . And when she smiled, it was around a mouthful of bloody teeth.

I felt myself being hauled up and out of my seat, and almost before I realized what was happening, I was slipping down the wet bus steps and tumbling into the pouring rain. A different Anti-skin lifted me off my knees and guided me in the direction of two other boys about my age. Their clothes clung to them like old skin, translucent and drooping.

There were nearly twenty Anti-skins on the ground, swarming the neat small lines of kids. My feet had been completely swallowed by the mud, and I was shivering in my pajamas, but no one took notice, and no one came up to cut the plastic binding our hands. We waited, silently, tongues clamped between our teeth. I looked up to the clouds, turning my face to the pounding rain. It looked like the sky was falling, piece by piece.

The last groups of four were being lifted off the bus and dropped onto the ground, including the girl with the broken face. She was the last one off, just behind a tall boy with a blank stare. I could barely make them out through the sheet of rain and the foggy bus windows, but I was sure I saw the girl lean forward and whisper something into the boy's ear, just as he took the first step off the bus.

He nodded, a quick jerk of her chin. The second her shoes touched the mud, she bolted to the right, ducking around the nearest Anti-skin's hands. One of the Anti-skins barked out a terrifying "Stop!" but she kept running, straight for the gates. With everyone's attention turned toward her, no one thought to look back at the girl still on the bus—no one but me. She came slinking down the steps,the front of his white tight shirt stained with his own blood. The same Anti-skin who had hit her before was now helping her down to the ground, as she had done for the rest of us. I watched her fingers close around his elbow and felt the echo of her grip on my own newly bruised skin; I watched her turn and say something to her, her face a mask of perfect calm.

I watched the Anti-skin let go of his arm, take her gun out of its holster, and, without a word—without even blinking—stick the barrel inside of her mouth and pull the trigger.

I don't know if I screamed aloud, or if the strangled sound had come from the woman waking up to what she was doing, one seconds too late to stop it. The image of her face—her slack jaw, her eyes bulging out of her skull, the ripple of suddenly loose skin—stayed burned into the air like a photonegative far longer than the explosion of pink, misty blood and clumps of hair against the bus.

The kid standing next to me dropped into a dead faint, and then there wasn't a single one of us that wasn't screaming.

The Anti-skin hit the ground the exact same moment the girl was tackled into the mud. The rain washed the soldier's blood down off the bus windows and yellow panels, stretching the bloated dark lines, drawing them out as they disappeared completely. It was that fast.

The girl was looking only at us. "Run!" he yelled through his broken teeth. "What are you doing? Run—run!"

And the first thing that went through my mind wasn't What are you? or even Why?

It was But I have nowhere else to go.

She might as well have blown the entire bus up for the panic it caused. Some kids listened and tried to bolt for the fence, only to have their path blocked by the line of soldiers in black that seemed to pour out of the air. Most just stood there and screamed, and screamed, and screamed, the rain falling all around, the mud sucking their feet down firmly in place. A girl knocked me down to the ground with her shoulder as the other Anti-skins rushed for the girl, still standing in the bus doorway. The soldiers were yelling at us to sit on the ground, to stay frozen there. I did exactly as I was told.

"Level 5!" I heard one of them yell into his walkie-talkie. "We have a situation at the main gate. I need restraints for an Lev—"

It wasn't until after they had rounded us back up and had the boy with the broken face on the ground that I dared to look up. And that I began to wonder, dread tickling up my spine, if she was the only one who could do something like that. Or if everyone around me was there because they could cause someone to hurt that way, too.

Not me—the words blazed through my head—not me, they made a mistake, a mistake—

I watched with a feeling of hollowness at the center of my chest as one of the soldiers took a can of spray paint in hand and painted an enormous orange X over the girl's back. The girl had only stopped yelling because two Anti-skin had pulled a strange black mask down over the lower part of his face—like they were muzzling a dog.

Tension beaded on my skin like sweat. They marched our lines through the camp toward the Infirmary for sorting. As we walked, we saw kids heading in the opposite direction, from a row of pathetic wood cabins. All of them were wearing white uniforms, with a different colored X marked on each of their backs and a number written in black above it. I saw five different colors in all—green, blue, yellow, orange, and red.

The kids with the green and blue X's were allowed to walk freely, their hands swinging at their sides. Those with a faint yellow X, or an orange or red one, were forced to fight through the mud with their hands and feet in metal cuffs, a long chain connecting them in a line. The ones marked with orange smears had the muzzlelike masks over their faces.

We were hurried into the bright lights and dry air of what a torn paper sign had labeled INFIRMARY. The doctors and nurses lined the long hallway, watching us with frowns and shaking heads. The checkered tile floor became slick with rain and mud, and it took all of my concentration not to slip. My nose was filled with the smell of rubbing alcohol and fake lemon.

We filed one by one up a dark cement staircase at the back of the first floor, which was filled with empty beds and limp white curtains. Not an Orange. Not a Red.

I could feel my guts churning deep in the pit of my stomach. I couldn't stop seeing that woman's face, right when she pulled the trigger, or the mass of her bloody hair that had landed near my feet. I couldn't stop seeing my mom's face, when she had locked me out in the garage. I couldn't stop seeing Grams's face.

She'll come, I thought. She'll come. She'll fix Mom and Dad and she will come to get me. She'll come, she'll come, she'll come…

Upstairs, they finally cut the plastic binding that tied our hands, and divided us again, sending half down to the right end of the freezing hallway and half to the left. Both sides looked exactly the same—no more than a few closed doors, and a small window at the very end. For a moment, I did nothing but watch the rain pelt that tiny, foggy pane of glass. Then, the door on the left swung open with a low whine, and the face of a plump, middle-aged man appeared. He cast one look in our direction before whispering something to the Anti-skin at the head of the group. One by one, more doors opened, and more adults appeared. The only thing they had in common aside from their white coats was a shared look of suspicion.

Without a single word of explanation, the Anti-skins began pulling and pushing kids toward each white coat and its associated office. The outburst of confused, distressed noises that erupted from the lines was shushed with a piercing buzzer. I fell back onto my heels, watching the doors shut one by one, wondering if I would ever see those kids again.

What's wrong with us? My head felt like it was full of wet sand as I looked over my shoulder. The girl with the broken face was nowhere, but his memory had chased me all the way through the camp. Did they bring us here because they thought we had Kurozuma's Disease? Did they think we were going to die?

How had that boy made the Anti-skin do what she had done? What had he said to her?

I felt a hand slide into mine as I stood there, trembling hard enough for my joints to hurt. The girl—the same one that had pulled me down to the mud outside—gave me a fierce look. Her black hair which is rather long was plastered against her skull. Her dark eyes flashed, and when she spoke, I saw that they had cut the wires on her braces but had left the metal nubs glued to her front teeth.

"Don't be scared," she whispered. "Don't let them see."

The handwritten label on the tag of her jacket said KONGOU MITSUKO. It stuck up against the back of her neck like an afterthought.

We stood shoulder to shoulder, close enough that our linked fingers were hidden between the fabric of my pajama pants and her purple puffer jacket. They had picked her up on the way to school the same morning they had come for me. That had been a day ago, but I remembered seeing her dark eyes burning bright with hate at the back of the van they had locked us in. She hadn't screamed as the others had.

The kids who had disappeared through the doors now came back through them, clutching gray sweaters and shorts in their hands. Instead of falling back into our line, they were marched downstairs before anyone could think to get a word or questioning look in.

They don't look hurt. I could smell permanent marker and something that might have been rubbing alcohol, but no one was bleeding or crying.

When it was finally the girl's turn, the Anti-skin at the head of the line forced us apart with a sharp jerk. I wanted to go in with her, to face whatever was behind the door. Anything had to be better than being alone again without anyone or anything to anchor myself to.

My hands were shaking so badly that I had to cross my arms and grip my elbows to get them to stop. I stood at the front of the line, looking at the gleaming span of checkered tile between the Anti-skin's black boots and my mud-splattered toes. I was already tired down to my bones from the sleepless night before, and the scent of the soldier's boot polish sent my head deeper into a fog.

And then they called for me.

I found myself in a dimly lit office, half the size of my cramped bedroom at home, with no memory of ever having walked into it.

"Name?"

I was looking at a cot and a strange, halo-shaped gray machine hanging over it.

The white coat's face appeared from behind the laptop on the table. He was a frail-looking man, whose thin silver glasses seemed to be in serious danger of sliding off his nose with every quick movement. His voice was unnaturally high, and he didn't so much as say the word as squeak it. I pressed my back against the closed door, trying to put space between me, the man, and the machine.

The white coat followed my gaze to the cot. "That's a scanner. There's nothing to be afraid of."

I must not have looked convinced, because he continued. "Have you ever broken a bone or bumped your head? Do you know what a CT scan is?"

It was the patience in his voice that drew me forward a step. I shook my head.

"In a minute I'm going to have you lie down, and I'll use that machine to check to make sure your head is all right. But first, you need to tell me your name."

Make sure your head is all right. How did he know—?

"Your name," he said, the words taking on a sudden edge.

"Mikoto," I answered, and had to spell my last name for him.

He began typing on the laptop, distracted for a moment. My eyes drifted back over to the machine, wondering how painful it would be for me to have the inside of my head inspected. Wondering if he could somehow see what I had done.

"Damn, they're getting lazy," the white coat groused, more to himself than to me. "Didn't they pre-classify you?"

I had no idea what he was talking about.

"When they picked you up, did they ask you questions?" he asked, standing. The room wasn't large by any means. He was by my side in two steps, and I was in a full panic in two heartbeats. "Did your parents report your symptoms to the soldiers?"

"Symptoms?" I squeezed out. "I don't have any symptoms—I don't have the—"

He shook his head, looking more annoyed than anything else. "Calm down; you're safe here. I'm not going to hurt you." The white coat kept talking, his voice flat, something flickering in his eyes. The lines sounded practiced.

"There are many different kinds of symptoms," he explained, leaning down to look at me eye to eye. All I could see were his crooked front teeth and the dark circles rimming his eyes. His breath smelled like coffee and spearmint. "Many different kinds of…children. I'm going to take a picture of your brain, and it'll help us put you with the others who are like you."

I shook my head. "I don't have any symptoms! Grams is coming, she is, I swear—she'll tell you, please!"

"Tell me, sweetheart, are you very good at math and puzzles? level 1 are incredibly smart and have astonishing memories."

My mind jumped back to the kids outside, to the colored X's on the back of their shirts. Green, I thought. What had the other colors been? Red, Blue, Yellow, and—

And Level 5. Like the girl with the bloody mouth.

"All right," he said, taking a deep breath, "just lie back on that cot and we'll get started. Now, please."

I didn't move. Thoughts were rushing too quickly to my head. It was a struggle to even look at him.

"Now," he repeated, moving toward the machine. "Don't make me call in one of the soldiers. They won't be nearly as nice, believe me." A screen on the side panel came alive with a single touch, and then the machine itself lit up. At the center of a gray circle was a bright white light, blinking as it set itself up for another test. It was breathing out hot air in sputters and whines that seemed to prick every pore on my body.

All I could think was, He'll know. He'll know what I did to them.

My back was flat against the door again, my hand blindly searching for the handle. Every single lecture my dad had ever given me about strangers seemed to be coming true. This was not a safe place. This man was not nice.

I was shaking so hard, he might have thought I was going to faint. That, or he was going to force me onto the cot himself and hold me there until the machine came down and locked over me.

I hadn't been ready to run before, but I was now. As my fingers tightened on the door handle, I felt his hand push through my unruly mass of hazel haired and seize the back of my neck. The shock of his freezing hand on my flushed skin made me flinch, but it was the explosion of pain at the base of my skull that made me cry out.

He stared at me, unblinking, his eyes suddenly unfocused. But I was seeing everything—impossible things. Hands drumming on a car's steering wheel, a woman in a black dress leaning forward to kiss me, a baseball flying toward my face out on a diamond, an endless stretch of green field, a hand running through a little girl's hair… The images played out behind my closed eyes like an old home movie. The shapes of people and objects burned themselves into my retinas and stayed there, floating around behind my eyelids like hungry ghosts.

Not mine, my mind screamed. These don't belong to me.

But how could they have been his? Each image—were they memories? Thoughts?

Then I saw more. A boy, the same scanner machine above him flickering and smoking. X' Yellow. level 3. I felt my lips form the words, as if I had been there to say them. I saw a small red-haired girl from across a room much like this one; saw her lift a finger, and the table and laptop in front of her rise several inches from the ground. X' Blue level 2—again, the man's voice in my head. A boy holding a pencil between his hands, studying it with a terrifying intensity—the pencil bursting into flames. Red. Level with pictures and numbers on them held up in front of a child's face. X'Green. Level 1.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but I couldn't pull back from the images that came next—the lines of marching, muzzled monsters. I was standing high above, looking down through rain-spattered glass, but I saw the handcuffs and the chains. I saw everything.

I'm not one of them. Please, please, please…

I fell, dropping to my knees, bracing my hands against the tile, trying to keep from being sick all over myself and the floor. The white coat's hand still gripped the back of my neck. "I'm Green," I sobbed, the words half lost to the machine's buzzing. The light had been bright before, but now it only amplified the pounding behind my eyes. I stared into his blank eyes, willing him to believe me. Blue lights run through his arm and spread through his body. "I'm Green…please, please…"

But I saw my mother's face, the smile the girl with the broken mouth had given me, like he had recognized something of himself in me. I knew what I was.

"Level 1…"

I looked up at the sound of the voice that floated down to me. I stared, and he stared right back, his eyes unfocused. He was mumbling something now, his mouth full of mush, like he was chewing on the words and burned skin smell begins to spread through the room.

"I'm—"

"Green," he said, shaking his head, turning to hand in his slightly tousled hair. His voice sounded stronger. I was still on the floor when he went to shut down the machine, and so shocked when he sat back down at the desk that I actually forgot to cry. But it wasn't until he picked up the green spray paint and drew that enormous X over the back of the uniform shirt and handed it to me that I remembered to start breathing.

It'll be okay, I told myself as I walked back down the cold hallway, down the steps, to the girls and men in uniforms waiting for me below. It wasn't until that night, as I lay awake in my bunk, that I realized I would only ever have one chance to run—and I hadn't taken it.

note: what about ANK instead of Anti-skin? or ASIN ?


	4. Chapter 3

THREE

KONGOU AND I were both assigned to Cabin 128, along with the rest of the girls from our bus that were classified as level 1. Fourteen in all, though by the next day, there were twenty more. They capped the number at thirty a week later, and moved on to filling the next wooden structure along the camp's perpetually soggy and trampled main trail.

Bunks were assigned based on alphabetical order, which put Kongou directly above me—a small mercy, seeing as the rest of the girls were nothing like her. They spent the first night either stunned into silence or sobbing. I didn't have time for tears anymore. I had questions.

"What are they going to do with us?" I whispered up to her. We were at the far left end of the cabin, our bunk wedged in the corner. The walls of the structure had been thrown together so quickly that they weren't completely sealed. Every now and then a freezing draft and sometimes a snowflake whistled in from the silent outdoors.

"I dunno," she said quietly. A few beds over, one of the girls had finally dropped off into the oblivion of sleep, and her snores were helping to cover our conversation. When a Anti-skin had escorted us to our new residence, it had been with several warnings: no talking after lights-out, no leaving, no use of freak abilities—intentional or accidental. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone refer to what we could do as "freak abilities" instead of the polite alternative, "symptoms."

"I guess keep us here, until they figure out a cure," Kongou continued. "That's what my dad said, at least, when the soldiers came to get me. What did your parents say?"

My hands hadn't stopped shaking from earlier, and every time I tried shutting my eyes all I could see were the white coat's blank ones staring right back into mine. The mention of my parents only made the pounding in my head that much worse.

I don't know why I lied. It was easier, I guess, than the truth—or maybe because some small part of it felt like it was the actual truth. "My parents are dead."

She sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth. "I wish mine were, too."

"You don't mean that!"

"They're the ones that sent me here, aren't they?" It was dangerous, how fast her voice was rising. "Obviously they wanted to get rid of me."

"I don't think—" I began, only to stop myself. Hadn't my parents wanted to get rid of me, too?

"Whatever; it's fine," she said, though it clearly wasn't and it wasn't ever going to be. "We'll stay here and stick together, and when we get out, we can go wherever we want, and no one will stop us."

My mom used to say that sometimes just saying something aloud was enough to make it true. I wasn't so sure about that, but the way Kongou-san said it, the low burn beneath her words, made me reconsider. It suddenly seemed possible that it could work out that way—that if I couldn't go home, I would still be all right in the end if I could just stick with her. It was like wherever Kongou went, a path opened up behind her; all I had to do was stay in her shadow, out of the Anti-skins' line of sight, and avoid doing anything that would call attention to me.

It worked that way for five years.

Five years feels like a lifetime when one day bleeds into the next, and your world doesn't stretch any farther than the gray electric fence surrounding two miles of shoddy buildings and mud. I was never happy at Tokiwadai, but it was bearable because Kongou was there to make it that way. She was there with the eye roll when Kinuho Wannai, one of our cabinmates, tried to cut her own hair with garden shears to look more "stylish" ("For who?" Kongou had muttered. "Her reflection in the Washroom mirror?"); the silly cross-eyed face behind the back of the Anti-skin lecturing her for speaking out of turn yet again; and the firm—but gentle—reality check when girls' imaginations started running too wild, or rumors sprung up about the Anti-skins letting us go.

Kongou and I—we were realists. We knew we weren't getting out. Dreaming led to disappointment, and disappointment to a kind of depressed funk that wasn't easy to shake. Better to stay in the gray than get eaten by the dark.

Two years into life at Tokiwadai, the camp controllers started work on the Factory. They had failed at rehabilitating the dangerous ones and hauled them off in the night, but the so-called "improvements" didn't stop there. It dawned on them that the camp needed to be entirely "self-sufficient." From that point on, we'd be growing and cooking our own food to eat, mucking out the Washrooms, making our uniforms, and even making theirs.

The brick structure was all the way at the far west side of camp, cupped in one end of Tokiwadai's long rectangle. They had us dig out the foundation for the Factory, but the camp controllers didn't trust us with the actual building of it. We watched it go up floor by floor, wondering what it was for, and what they would do to us there. That was back when all sorts of rumors were floating around like dandelion fluff in the wind—some thought the scientists were coming back for more experiments; some thought the new building was where they were going to move the Reds, Oranges, and Yellows, if and when they returned; and some thought it was where they were going to get rid of us, once and for all.

"We'll be fine," Kongou had told me one night, just before they turned the lights out. "No matter what—you hear me?"

But it wasn't fine. It wasn't fine then, and it wasn't fine now.

There was no talking in the Factory, but there were ways around it. Actually, the only time we were allowed to speak to one another was in our cabin, before lights-out. Everywhere else, it was all work, obedience, silence. But you can't go on for years together without developing a different kind of language, one that was all sly grins and quick glances. Today, they had us polishing and relacing the Anti-skins' boots and tightening their uniform buttons, but a single wiggle of a loose black shoelace and a look toward the girl standing across from you—the same one who had called you an awful word the night before—spoke volumes.

The Factory wasn't much of a factory. A better name probably would have been the Warehouse, only because the building consisted of just one huge room, with a pathway suspended over the work floor. The builders had enough thought to install four large windows on the west and east walls, but because there was no heat in the winter or AC in the summer, they tended to let more bad weather in than sunlight.

The camp controllers tried to keep things as simple as possible; they set up rows and rows of tables lengthwise across the dusty concrete floor. There were hundreds of us working in the Factory that morning, all in Green uniforms. Ten Anti-Sks patrolled the walkways above us, each with his or her own black rifle. Another ten were on the ground with us.

It was no more unnerving than usual to feel the press of their eyes coming from every direction. But I hadn't slept well the night before, even after a full day of work in the Garden. I had gone to bed with a headache and woken up with a glossy fever fog over my brain, and a sore throat to match. Even my hands seemed lethargic, my fingers stiff as pencils.

I knew I wasn't keeping up, but it was like drowning, in a way. The harder I tried to work, to keep my head above water, the more tired I felt and the slower I became. After a while, even standing upright was taking too much effort, and I had to brace myself against the table to keep from swan-diving straight into it. On most days, I could get away with a snail's pace. It wasn't like they had us doing important work, or that we had deadlines to meet. Every task we were assigned was just glorified busywork to keep our hands moving, our bodies occupied, and our minds dead with boredom. Kongou called it "forced recess"—they let us out of our cabins, and the work wasn't difficult or tiring like it was in the Garden, but no one wanted to be there.

Especially when bullies came to the playground.

I knew he was standing behind me long before I heard him start counting the finished, shiny shoes in front of me. He smelled like spiced meat and car oil, which already was an unsettling combination before a whiff of cigarette smoke was added to the mix. I tried to straighten my back under the weight of his gaze, but it felt like he had taken two fists and dug the knuckles deep between my shoulder blades.

"Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…" How was it that they could make mere numbers sound sharp?

At Tokiwadai, we weren't allow to touch one another, and we were beyond forbidden to touch one of the Anti-sks, but it didn't mean that they couldn't touch us. The man took two steps forward; his boots—exactly like the ones on the table—nudged the back of my standard white slip-ons. When I didn't respond, he snuck an arm past my shoulder, on the pretense of sorting through my work, and pressed me into his chest. Shrink, I told myself, curling my spine down, bending my face to the task in front of me, shrink and disappear.

"Worthless," I heard the man grunt behind me. His body was letting off enough heat to warm the entire building. "You're doing this all wrong. Look—watch, girl!"

I got my first real glance at him out of the corner of my eye as he ripped the polish-stained cloth out of my hand and moved to my side. He was short, only an inch or two taller than me, with a stubby nose, and cheeks that seemed to flap every time he took a breath.

"Like this," he was saying, swiping at the boot he had taken. "Look at me!"

A trick. We weren't supposed to look them directly in the eyes, either.

I heard a few chuckles around me—not from the girls, but from more Anti-sks gathered at his back.

It felt like I was boiling from the inside out. It was December, and the Factory couldn't have been warmer than forty degrees, but lines of sweat were racing down the curves of my cheeks, and I felt a hard, stiff cough welling up in my throat.

There was a light touch at my side. Kongou couldn't look up from her own work, but I saw her eyes slide over to me, trying to assess the situation. A wave of furious red was making its way up from her throat to her face, and I could only imagine the kinds of words she was holding back. Her bony elbow brushed against mine again, as if to remind me that she was still there.

Then, with agonizing slowness, I felt the same Anti-skn move behind me again, brushing my shoulder and arm with his own as he gently deposited the boot back on the table in front of me.

"These boots," he said in a low, purring voice as he tapped the plastic bin containing all of my finished work. "Did you lace them?"

If I hadn't known what kind of punishment I'd get for it, I would have burst out into tears. I felt more stupid and ashamed the longer I stood there, but I couldn't say anything. I couldn't move. My tongue had swelled up to twice its usual size behind my clenched teeth. The thoughts buzzing around my head were light and edged with a strange milky quality. My eyes could barely focus now.

More snickers from behind us.

"The laces are all wrong." His other arm wrapped around my left side, until there wasn't an inch of his body that wasn't pressed up against mine. Something new rose in my throat, and it tasted strongly of acid.

The tables around us had gone completely quiet and still.

My silence only egged him on. With no warning, he picked up the bin of boots and flipped it over, so dozens of boots scattered across the length of the table with a terrible amount of noise. Now everyone in the Factory was looking. Everyone saw me, thrust out into the light.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!" he sang out, knocking the boots around. But they weren't. They were perfect. They were just boots, but I knew whose feet would slide into them. I knew better than to screw it up. "Are you as deaf as you are dumb, Green?"

And then, clear as day, low as thunder, I heard Kongou say, "That was my bin."

And all I could think was No. Oh no.

I felt the Anti-skn shift behind me, pull back in surprise. They always acted this way—surprised that we remembered how to use words, and use them against them.

"What did you say?" he barked.

I could see the insult rising to her lips. She was rolling it around on her tongue like a piece of hard lemon candy. "You heard me. Or did inhaling that polish kill whatever helpless brain cells you had left?"

I knew what she wanted when she looked over at me. I knew what she was waiting for. It was exactly what she had just given me: backup.

I hung back a step, crossing my arms over my stomach. Don't do it, I told myself. Don't. She can handle it. Kongou had nothing to hide, and she was brave—but every time she did this, every time she stood up for me and I shrunk back in fear, it felt like I was betraying her. Once again, my voice was locked away behind layers of caution and fear. If they were to look into my file, if they were to see the blanks there and start looking into filling them, no punishment they'd give Kongou would ever compare to the one they'd give me.

That was what I told myself, at least.

The right side of the guy's lips inched up, turning a grim line into a mocking smirk. "We've got a live one."

Come on, come on, Mikoto. It was all in the tilt of her head and the tightness of her shoulders. She didn't understand what would happen to me. I wasn't brave like she was.

But I wanted to be. I so, so wanted to be.

I can't. I didn't have to say the words aloud. She read it easily enough on my face. I saw the realization come together behind her eyes, even before the Anti-skn stepped forward and took her arm, yanking her away from the table, and from me.

Turn around, I begged. Her ponytail was swinging with each step, rising above the shoulders of the Anti-skn escorting her out. Turn around. I needed her to see how sorry I was, to understand the clenching in my chest and the nausea in my stomach had nothing to do with the fever. Every single desperate thought that ran through my head made me feel sick with disgust. The eyes that had been on me lifted two by two, and the soldier never came back to finish his personal brand of torment. There was no one left to see me cry; I had learned to do it silently, without any fuss, years ago. They had no reason to so much as look my way again. I was back in the long shadow Kongou had left behind.

The punishment for speaking out of turn was a day's worth of isolation, handcuffed to one of the gateposts in the Garden regardless of the temperature or the weather. I'd seen kids sitting in a mound of snow, blue in the face, and without a single blanket to cover them. Even more sunburned, covered in mud, or trying to scratch patches of bug bites with their free hands. Unsurprisingly, the punishment for talking back to a AntSk or camp controller was the same, only you also weren't given food and, sometimes, not even water.

The punishment for a repeat offense was something so terrible, Kongou wouldn't or couldn't talk about it when she finally returned to our cabin two days later. She came in, wet and shaking from the winter rain, looking like she had slept no more than I had. I slid off my bunk and was on my feet, rushing to her side, before she had even made it halfway across the cabin.

My hand slipped around her arm, but she pulled away, her jaw clenched in a way that made her look almost ferocious. Her cheeks and nose had been wind-whipped to a bright red, but she didn't have any bruises or cuts. Her eyes weren't even swollen from crying, like mine were. There was a subtle limp to her walk, maybe, but if I hadn't known what had happened, I would have just assumed she was coming in from a long afternoon of working in the Garden.

"Kongou-san," I said, hating the way my voice shook. She didn't stop or deign to look at me until we were by our bunks, and she had one fist curled in her bedsheets, ready to pull herself up to the top bed.

"Say something, please," I begged.

"You stood there." Kongou's voice was low and rough, like she hadn't used it for days.

"You shouldn't have—"

Her chin came down to rest against her chest. Long, tangled masses of hair fell over her shoulders and cheeks, hiding her expression. I felt it then—the way that the hold I had on her had suddenly sprung free. I had the strangest sensation of floating, of drifting farther and farther away with nothing and no one to cling to. I was standing right beside her, but the distance between us had split into the kind of canyon I couldn't jump across.

"You're right," Kongou said, finally. "I shouldn't have." She drew in a shuddering breath. "But then, what would have happened to you? You would have just stood there, and let him do that, and you wouldn't have defended yourself at all."

And then she was looking at me, and all I wanted was for her to turn away again. Her eyes flashed, darker than I had ever seen before.

"They can say horrible things, hurt you, but you never fight back—and I know, Misaka, I know, that's just how you are, but sometimes I wonder if you even care. Why can't you stand up for yourself, just once?"

Her voice was barely above a whisper, but the ragged quality to it made me think she was either going to scream or burst out into hysterical tears. I glanced down to where her hands were tugging at the edges of her shorts, moving so fast and frantic that I almost didn't see the angry red marks that circled her wrists.

"Kon—Kongou—"

"I want—" She swallowed, hard. Her tears caught in her eyelashes, but didn't fall. "I want to be alone now. Just for a while."

I shouldn't have reached for her, not with fever and exhaustion pressing down on me. Not while I was trembling with a bone-deep hate for myself. But I thought, then, that if I could tell her the truth, if I could explain, she wouldn't look at me that way again. She would know that the last thing—the absolute last thing—I ever wanted was for her to be hurt because of me. She was the only thing I had here.

But the second my fingers touched her shoulder, the world dropped out from under me. I felt a fire start at the ends of my hair and burn its way through my skull. The fever I thought I had kicked suddenly painted the world a fuzzy shade of gray and bright sparkles. I was seeing Kongou's blank face, and she was gone, replaced by white-hot memories that didn't belong to me—a whiteboard at school filled with math problems, a golden retriever digging in a garden, the world rising and falling from the perspective of a swing, the roots of the vegetables in the Garden being pulled free, the brick wall at the back of the Mess Hall against my face as another fist swung down toward me—a quick assault from every side, like a series of camera flashes.

And when I finally came back to myself, we were still staring at each other. For a second, I thought I saw my horrified face reflected in her dark, glassy eyes. Kongou wasn't looking at me; she didn't seem to be looking at anything beyond the dust floating lazy and free through the air to my right. I knew that blank look. I'd seen my mother wear it years before.

"Are you new here?" she demanded, suddenly defensive and startled. Her eyes flicked down from my face to my bony knees, then back up again. She sucked in a deep breath, as if coming up for air after a long time beneath dark waters. "Do you have a name at least?"

"Mikoto," I whispered. It was the last word I spoke for nearly a year.


	5. Chapter 4

FOUR

I WOKE TO COLD WATER and a woman's soft voice. "You're all right," she was saying. "You'll be fine." I'm not sure who she thought she was fooling with her sweet little B.S., but it wasn't me.

I let her bring the wet towel up to my face again, savoring her warmth as she leaned in closer. She smelled of rosemary and past things. For a second, just one, her hand came to rest against mine, and it was almost more than I could take.

I wasn't at home, and this woman wasn't my mother. I started gasping, desperate to keep everything inside me. I couldn't cry, not in front of her, or any of the other adults. I wouldn't give them the pleasure.

"Are you still in pain?"

The only reason I opened my eyes was because she pulled them open herself. One at a time, shining an intense light in each. I tried to throw my hands up to shield them, but they had strapped me down in Velcro cuffs. Fighting against the restraints was pointless.

The woman clucked her tongue and stepped back, taking her flowery fragrance with her. The smell of antiseptic and peroxide flooded the air, and I knew exactly where I was.

The sounds of Tokiwadai's infirmary faded in and out in uneven waves. Some kid crying out in pain, boots clipping against the white tile floors, the creak of wheelchair wheels…I felt like I was standing above a tunnel with my ear to the ground, listening to the hum of cars passing beneath me.

"Misaka-san?"

The woman was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and a brown pencil skirt and wears a long white coat. With her pale skin and long wavy brown hair she all but disappeared into the thin curtain that had been pulled around my bed. She caught me staring and smiled, so wide and so pretty.

The woman was the youngest doctor I'd ever seen in Tokiwadai—though admittedly I could count my trips to the Infirmary on one hand. I went once for the stomach flu and dehydration after what Kongou called my Gut Puking Spectacular, and once for a sprained wrist. Both times I felt far worse after being groped by a pair of wrinkled hands than I had before I'd come in. Nothing cures a cold faster than the thought of an old perv wearing a cologne of alcohol and lemon hand soap.

This woman—she was unreal. Everything about her.

"My name is Hatairo Kiyama . I'm a volunteer with the Kihara Corporation."

I nodded, glancing at the gold swan insignia on her coat pocket.

She leaned in closer. "We're a big medical company that does research and sends doctors in to help care for you guys at the camps. If it makes you feel more comfortable, you're more than welcome to call me Kiyama and leave off the doctor business."

Sure I was. I stared at the hand she extended toward me. Silence hung between us, punctuated by the pounding in my head. After an awkward moment, Dr. Hatairo stuffed her hand back into the pocket of her lab coat, but not before letting it stray over the restraint securing my left hand to the bed's guardrail.

"Do you know why you're here, Mikoto? Do you remember what happened?"

Before or after the Tower tried to fry my brain? But I couldn't say it out loud. When it came to the adults, it was better not to talk. They had a way of hearing one thing and processing it as something else. No reason to give them an excuse to hurt you.

It had been eight months since I'd last used my voice. I wasn't sure I even remembered how.

The doctor somehow guessed the question I was barely holding back at the tip of my tongue. "They turned on the Calm Control after a fight broke out in the Mess Hall. It seems that things got…a bit out of hand."

That was an understatement. The White Noise—Calm Control, the higher powers called it—was used to settle us down, so to speak, while it did absolutely nothing to them. It was like a dog whistle, the pitch tuned perfectly so only our freak brains could pick it up and process it.

They turned it on for a whole host of reasons, sometimes for things as small as a kid accidentally using their ability, or to stamp out unruliness in one of the cabins. But in both of those instances, they would have piped the noise directly into whatever building the kids were in. If they used it across the camp, blasting it over the speakers for us all to hear, then things must have gotten really out of hand. They must have been worried that there was a spark that would have set the rest of us ablaze.

There was no hint of hesitation on Dr. Hatairo's face as she unstrapped my wrists and ankles. The towel she had been using to clean my face hung limp on the guardrail, dripping water. Bright red splotches soaked through its white fabric.

I reached up and touched my mouth, my cheeks, my nose. When I pulled my fingers away, I was only half-surprised to see that they were coated with dark blood. It was crusted between my nostrils and lips, as if someone had clocked me right in the honker.

Trying to sit up was the worst idea that crossed my mind. My chest screamed in pain, and I was flat on my back again before I even registered falling. Dr. Hatairo was beside me in an instant, cranking the metal bed into an upright position.

"You have some bruised ribs," she said.

I tried to take a deep breath, but my chest was too tight to inhale anything more than a choked gasp. She must not have noticed because she was looking at me with those kind eyes again, saying, "May I ask a few questions?"

The fact that she asked my permission was amazing in and of itself. I studied her, searching for the hatred buried beneath the layer of pleasantness on her face, the fear hovering in her soft eyes, the disgust caught in the corner of her smile. Nothing. Not even annoyance.

Some poor kid started to throw up in the stall to my right; I could see his dark outline like a shadow against the curtain. There was no one sitting with him, no one holding his hand. Just him and his bowl of puke. And here I was, my heart skipping beats out of fear that the fairy-tale princess sitting next to me was going to have me put down like a rabid dog. She didn't know what I was—she couldn't have known.

You're being paranoid, I told myself. Get a grip.

Dr. Hatairo pulled a pen out of her messy bun. "Mikoto, when they turned on the Capacity down, do you remember falling forward and hitting your face?"

"No," I said. "I was…already on the ground." I didn't know how much to tell her. The smile on her face stretched, and there was something…smug about it.

"Do you usually experience this much pain and bleeding from the Capacity down?"

Suddenly, the pain in my chest had nothing to do with my ribs.

"I'll take that as a no."

I couldn't see what she was writing, only that her hand and pen were flying across the paper, scribbling as though her life depended on it.

I always took the Capacity down harder than the other girls in my cabin. But blood? Never.

Dr. Hatairo was humming lightly under her breath as she wrote, some song that I thought might have been by the Rolling Stones.

She's with the camp controllers, I reminded myself. She is one of them.

But…in another world, she might not have been. Even though she was wearing the scrubs and white coat, Dr. Hatairo didn't look much older than I was. She had a young face, and it was probably a curse to her in the outside world.

I had always thought that people born before Generation Freak were the lucky ones. They lived without fear of what would happen when they stepped over the border between childhood and adolescence. As far as I knew, if you were older than thirteen when they started rounding kids up, you were home free—you got to pass Freak Camp on the board game of life and head straight on to Normalville. But looking at now, seeing the deep lines carved in her and facebags under her eyes that no one in their twenties should have had, I wasn't so sure they had gotten off scot-free. They'd gotten a better deal than what we ended up with, though.

Abilities. Powers that defied explanation, mental talents so freakish, doctors and scientists reclassified our entire generation as Espers. We were no longer human. Our brains broke that mold.

"I see from your chart that you were classified as 'abnormal intelligence' in sorting," Dr. Hatairo said after a while. "The scientist that sorted you—did he run you through all of the tests?"

Something very cold coiled in my stomach. I might not have understood a great many things about the world, I might have only had a fourth grader's education, but I could tell when someone was trying to fish around for information. The Anti-skns had switched over to outright scare tactics years ago, but there was a time when all of their questioning had been done in soft voices. Fake sympathy reeked like bad breath.

Does she know? Maybe she ran a few tests while I was unconscious, and scanned my brain, or tested my blood, or something. My fingers curled one by one until both hands were tight fists. I tried to work the line of thought through, but I kept getting caught on the possibility. Fear made things hazy and light.

Her question hung in the air, suspended somewhere between truth and lie.

The clip of boots against the pristine tile forced my eyes up, away from the doctor's face. Each step was a warning, and I knew they were coming before Dr. Hatairo turned her head. She moved to push herself away from the bed, but I didn't let her. I don't know what possessed me, but I grabbed her wrist, the list of punishments for touching an authority figure running through my head like a skipping CD, each scratch sharper than the next.

We weren't supposed to touch anyone, not even each other.

"It was different this time," I whispered, the words aching in my throat. My voice sounded different to my ears. Weak.

Dr. Hatairo only had enough time to nod. The slightest movement, almost imperceptible, before a hand ripped back the curtain.

I had seen this Psi Special Forces officer before—Kongou called him the Grinch, because he looked like he had stepped straight out of the movie, save for no green skin.

The Grinch cast one look at me, his top lip peeling back in annoyance, before waving the doctor forward. She blew out a sigh and set her clipboard down on my lap.

"Thank you, Mikoto," she said. "If your pain gets any worse, call for help, okay?"

Was she on drugs? Who was going to help—the kid throwing up his stomach lining next door?

I nodded anyway, watching her turn to go. The last glimpse I had of her was her hand dragging the curtain back around. It was nice of her to give me privacy, but a little naive, given the black cameras hanging down between the beds.

The bulbs were installed all over Tokiwadai, lidless eyes always watching, never blinking. There were two cameras in our cabin alone, one on each end of the room, as well as one outside the door. It seemed like overkill, but when I was first brought to camp, there were so few of us that they really could watch us all day, every day, until their brains were ready to burst from boredom.

You had to squint to see it, but a tiny red light inside the black eye was the only clue that the camera had zeroed in on you. Over the years, as more and more kids were brought into Tokiwadai on the old school buses, Kongou and I began to notice that the cameras in our cabin no longer had the blinking red lights—not every day. Same went for the cameras in the laundry, the Washrooms, and the Mess Hall. I guess with three thousand kids spread out over a square mile, it was impossible to watch everyone all the time.

Still, they watched enough to put the fear of God in us. You had a better-than-average chance of being busted if you practiced your abilities, even under the cover of darkness.

Those blinking lights were the exact same shade as the blood-red band the Anti-Skns wore around the upper part of their right arm. The Ψ symbol was stitched on the crimson fabric, indicating their unfortunate role as caretakers of the country's freak children.

The camera above my bed had no red light. The relief that came over me at the realization actually made the air taste sweet. For just a moment, I was alone and unobserved. At Tokiwadai, that was an almost unheard-of luxury.

Dr. Hatairo—Kiyama—hadn't completely closed the curtain. When another doctor hurried past, the thin white fabric pulled back farther, allowing a familiar flash of blue to catch my eye. The portrait of a young boy, no more than twelve years old, stared back at me. His hair was the same shade as snow—, his eyes were dark crimson enough to burn from a distance. He was smiling, as always, his hands clasped in his lap, his dark school uniform without a wrinkle. Accelerator, Tokiwadai's first inmate.

There were at least two framed pictures of him in the Mess Hall, one in the kitchen, several nailed outside of the Green outhouses. It was easier to remember his face than it was to remember my mom's.

I forced myself to look away from his proud, unwavering grin. He may have gotten out, but the rest of us were still here.

As I tried to readjust my body, I knocked Dr. Kiyama's clipboard off my lap and into the crook of my left arm.

I knew there was a chance that they were watching, but I didn't care. Not then, when I had answers inches away from my fingertips. Why had she left it there, right below my nose, if she hadn't wanted me to see it? Why hadn't she taken it with her, like all of the other doctors would have done?

What was different about the Capacity down?

What did they figure out?

The fluorescent lights above me were exposed, glowing in the shape of long, angry bones. They gave off a hum, sounding more and more like a cloud of flies swirling around my ears. It only got worse as I flipped the clipboard over.

It wasn't my medical history.

It wasn't my current injuries, or lack thereof.

It wasn't my answers to Dr. Kiyama's questions.

It was a note, and it read: New CC was testing for undetected Ys, Os, Rs. Your bad reaction means that they know you aren't G. Unless you do exactly as I say, they will kill you tomorrow.

My hands were shaking. I had to set the clipboard down in my lap to read the rest.

I can get you out. Take the two pills under this note before bed, but don't let the Anti-Skns see you. If you don't, will keep your secret, but I can't protect you while you're in here. Destroy this.

It was signed, A friend, if you'd like.

I read the note one more time before I ripped it out from under the metal clip and shoved it in my mouth. It tasted like the bread they served us for lunch.

The pills were in a tiny clear bag clipped on top of my real medical chart. Scrawled in Dr. Kiyama's dismal handwriting was the note, Subject 3285 hit her head against the ground and lost consciousness. Nose was fractured when Subject 3286 elbowed her. Possible concussion.

My eyes were itching to look up, to peer into the black eye of the camera, but I didn't let myself. I took the pills and shoved them into the standard-issue sports bra the camp controllers had bestowed on us when they realized fifteen hundred teenage girls weren't going to stay twelve and flat forever. I didn't know what I was doing; I really didn't. My heart was racing so fast that for a moment I couldn't get any air.

Why had Dr. Kiyama done this to me? She knew I wasn't a level 1, but she had covered it up, lied on the report—was this just a trick? To see if I would incriminate myself?

I pressed my face into my hands. The packet of pills burned against my skin.

…they will kill you tomorrow.

Why did they even bother to wait? Why not take me out to the buses and shoot me now? Isn't that what they did with the others? The Yellows, Oranges, and Reds? They killed them, because they were too dangerous.

I am too dangerous.

I didn't know how to use my abilities. I wasn't like the other Oranges, who could kill someone with a touchs or slip nasty little thoughts into other people's minds. I had all of the power, and none of the control—all of the pain, and none of the benefits.

From what I'd been able to figure out, I had to touch someone for my abilities to take hold, and even then…it was more like I was glimpsing their thoughts, rather than screwing with them. I'd never tried to push a thought into someone else's head, and it wasn't like I'd had the opportunity or the desire to try. Every slip of the mind, intentional or not, left my head a jumble of thoughts and images, words and pain. It took hours to feel like myself again.

Imagine someone reaching straight into your chest, past the bones and blood and guts, and taking a nice firm hold on your spinal cord. Now imagine that they start shaking you so fast the world starts bulging and buckling under you. Imagine not being able to figure out later if the thought in your head is really yours or an unintentional keepsake from someone else's mind. Imagine the guilt of knowing you saw someone's deepest, darkest fear or secret; imagine having to face them the next morning and pretend you didn't see how their father used to hit them, the bright pink dress they wore to their fifth birthday party, their fantasies about this boy or that girl, and the neighborhood animals they used to kill for fun.

And then imagine the soul-crushing migraine that always follows, lasting anywhere between a few hours and a few days. That was what it was like. That was why I tried to avoid my mind so much as brushing up against someone else's at all costs. I knew the consequences. All of them.

And now I knew for certain what would happen if they found me out.

I flipped the clipboard over on my lap, and just in time. The same Anti-skin soldier was back at my curtain again, ripping it aside.

"You'll be returning to your cabin now," he said. "Come with me."

My cabin? I searched his face for any sign of a lie, but saw nothing except the usual annoyance. A nod was the only thing I could muster. My entire body was one earthquake of dread, and the moment my feet touched the ground, the back of my head uncorked. Everything spilled out, every thought, fear, and image. I collapsed against the guardrail, holding on tight to consciousness.

The black spots were still gliding in front of my eyes when the Anti-skin barked out, "Hurry it up! Don't think you get to stay another night here just by putting on an act."

Despite the harsh words, I saw the slightest flicker of fear in his face. That moment, the shift from fear to fury, could have summed up the feelings of every soldier at Tokiwadai. We'd heard rumors that service in the military was no longer voluntary, that everyone between the ages of twenty-two and forty had to serve—most of them in the army's new Esper branch.

I gritted my teeth. The whole wide world spun under me, trying to pull me back down to its dark center. The Anti-skin's words returned to me.

Another night? I thought. How long have I been here?

Still woozy, I followed the soldier into the hallway. The Infirmary was only two stories, small ones. The ceiling crept down so low that even I felt like I was in danger of scraping the top of my head on the doorframes. The treatment beds were on the first floor, but the second was reserved for kids needing to go into what we called Time Out. Sometimes they had something the rest of us could catch, but mostly it was for kids that went completely off their rocker, broken brains broken further by Tokiwadai.

I tried to stay focused on the movement of the Anti-skin's shoulder blades beneath his black uniform, but it was difficult when most of the curtains had been left open for anyone to peer inside. Most I could ignore, or cast only a brief glance their way, but the second to last stall before the exit doors…

My feet slowed of their own accord, giving my lungs time to breathe in the scent of rosemary.

I could hear Dr. Kiyama's gentle voice as she spoke to another kid in Blue. I recognized him—his cabin was directly across from mine. Kakure ? Maybe Kakin? All I knew was that there was blood on his face, too. Crusted around his nose and eyes, smearing across his checks. A stone dropped in my stomach. Had this Green been marked too? Was Dr. Kiyama cutting him the same deal? I couldn't have been the only one to figure out how to dodge the sorting system—who to influence, when to lie.

Maybe he and I were the same color beneath our skin.

And maybe we would both be dead by tomorrow.

"Keep up!" the soldier snapped. He didn't try to hide his annoyance as I hobbled after him, but he didn't need to worry; you couldn't have paid me to stay in the Infirmary, not while I was conscious. Not even with the new threat hanging over my head. I knew what they used to do there.

I knew what was under the layers of white paint.

The earliest kids they had brought in, the first guinea pigs, had been subjected to a whole array of electroshock and brain-chop-shop terrors. Stories were passed around camp with sick, almost holy reverence. The scientists were looking for ways to strip the kids' abilities—"rehabilitate" them—but they had mostly just stripped their will to live. The ones who made it out were given warden positions when the first small wave of kids was brought to camp. It was a strange bit of luck and timing that I had come in during the second wave. Each wave grew larger and larger as the camp expanded, until, three years ago, they'd run out of space completely. There were no new buses after that.

I still wasn't moving fast enough for the soldier. He pushed me forward into the hall of mirrors. The exit sign cast its gory light over us; the Ant-skn shoved me again, harder, and smiled when I fell. Anger flooded through me, cutting through the lingering pain in my limbs and any fear I had that he was taking me out somewhere in order to finish the job.

Soon we were standing outside, breathing in the damp spring air. I took a lungful of misty rain, and swallowed the bitterness down. I needed to think. Assess. If he was taking me outside to be shot, and was on his own, I could easily overpower him. That wasn't the issue. But in fact, I had no way of slipping past the electric fence—and no idea where the hell I was.

The AntSkin had slowed considerably, matching my pathetic pace. He fumbled once or twice against the muddy grass, nearly tripping over himself in full view of the soldiers high above on the Control Tower.

The moment the Tower came into view, a whole new weight added itself to the ball and chain of terror I was dragging behind me. The building itself wasn't that imposing; it was only called the Tower because it stuck up like a broken finger in a sea of one-story wooden shacks arranged in rings. The electric fence was the outer ring, protecting the world from us freaks. Cabins of Greens made up the next two rings. Blues, the next two rings. Before they were taken away, the few Reds and Oranges lived in the next rings. They'd been closest to the Tower—better, the controllers thought, to keep an eye on them. But after a Red had blown up his cabin, they moved the Reds farther away, using the Greens as a buffer in case any of the real threats tried to make a run for the fence.

Number of escape attempts?

Five.

Number of successful escape attempts?

Zero.

I don't know of one Blue or Green who had ever tried to make a run for it. When kids did stage desperate, pathetic breakouts, it had been in small groups of stronger levels Reds, Oranges, and Yellows. Once caught, they never came back.

But that was in the early days, when we had had more interaction with the other colors, and before they shuffled us around. The empty Red, Orange, and Yellow cabins became Blue cabins, and newly arriving Greens, the biggest group of all, filled the old Blue ones. The camp grew so large that the controllers staggered our schedules, so we ate by color and gender—and even then, it was still a tight squeeze fitting everyone at the tables. I hadn't seen a boy my own age up close in years.

I didn't start breathing again until the Tower was at our backs and it was clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where we were headed.

Thank you, I thought, to no one in particular. The relief lodged in my throat like a stone.

We reached Cabin 128 a few minutes later. The Anti-skin walked me to the door and pointed to the spigot just to the left of it. I nodded, and used the cold water to wash the blood off my face. He waited silently, but not patiently. After a few seconds, I felt his hand grab the back of my shirt and yank me up. Using his other hand, he slid his access card through the lock on our door.

Nunotaba, one of the older girls in my cabin, shoved the door open the rest of the way with her shoulder. She took my arm in one hand and nodded in the direction of the door. That seemed to be enough for him. Without another word, he took off down the path.

"Jesus Christ!" she hissed as she dragged me inside. "They couldn't have kept you another night? Oh no, they have to send you back early—is that blood?"

I waved her hands away, but Nunotaba pushed past the others and brushed my short, hazel hair over my eyes. At first I didn't understand why she was looking at me like that—with wide eyes, rimmed with a raw pink. She sucked her bottom lip in between her teeth.

"I really…thought you were…" We were still standing by the door, but I could feel the chill that had taken over the cabin. It settled over my skin like cold silk.

Nunotaba had been around these parts for far too long to really crack, but I was still surprised to see her so frazzled and at a loss for what to say. She and a few other girls were honorary leaders of our sad, mismatched group, nominated mostly because they hit certain bodily milestones before the rest of us, and could explain what was happening to us without laughing in our faces.

I offered a weak smile and a shrug, suddenly without words again. But she didn't look convinced, and she didn't let go of my arm. The cabin was dark and damp, the usual smell of mold clung to every surface, but I would have taken that over the Infirmary's clean, sterile stench any day.

"Let me…" Nunotaba took a deep breath. "Let me know if you're not, got it?"

And what would you be able to do about it? I wanted to ask. Instead, I turned to the back left corner of our cramped cabin. Whispers and stares followed my zigzagging path around the rows of bunk beds. The pills tucked tight against my chest felt like they were on fire.

"—she was gone," I heard someone say.

Wannai, who slept on the bottom bunk to the right of mine, had snuck up to Kongou's bed. When I came into view, they stopped mid-conversation to stare down at me. Eyes wide, mouths wider.

The sight of them together was still sickening to me, even after a year. How many days and nights had I spent perched up there with Kongoy, steadfastly ignoring Wannai's attempts to drag us into some stupid, pointless conversation?

Kongou's best-friend slot had been vacant for less than two hours when Wannai had slithered in—and not a day went by that Wannai didn't remind me of that.

"What…" Kongou leaned over the edge of her bed. She didn't look haughty or hostile, the way she usually did. She looked…concerned? Curious? "What happened to you?"

I shook my head, my chest tight with all the things I wanted to say. Wannai let out a sharp laugh. "Nice, real nice. And you wonder why she doesn't want to be your friend anymore?"

"I don't…" Kongou mumbled. "Whatever."

Sometimes I wondered if there was a part of Kongou that remembered not just me, but the person she used to be before I ruined her. Amazing how I had managed to erase every good part of Kongou—or at least, all the parts I loved. One touch, and she was gone.

A few girls asked me what had happened between the two of us. Most, I think, assumed Kongou was being cruel when she claimed that we had never, ever been friends and never would be. I tried to play it off with shrugs—but Kongou was the only thing that had made Tokiwadai bearable. Without her, it was no life at all.

No life at all.

I fingered the packet of pills.

Our cabin was brown on brown on brown. The only color was the white of our sheets, and most of those had aged to an ugly yellow. There were no shelves of books, no posters, no pictures. Just us.

I crawled onto my low bunk, dropping face-first into the worn sheets. I breathed in their familiar scent—bleach, sweat, and something distinctly earthy—and tried not to listen to the conversation above me.

A part of me had been waiting, I think—desperate to see if I could fix what I had done to my friend. But it was done. It was over, and she was gone, and the only one to blame was me. The best thing I could do for her was disappear; even if Dr. Kiyama was playing me and they really were going to get rid of me, they wouldn't connect us. They wouldn't question or punish Kongou because they thought she had helped me hide, like they would if we had still been friends. There were over three thousand of us at Tokiwadai, and I was the last Orange—maybe in the entire world. Or one of two, if the boy in the Infirmary was like me. It had only been a matter of time before they found out the truth.

I was dangerous, and I knew what they did to the dangerous ones.

The camp routine ran itself through, as it always did, churning us through the Mess Hall for dinner, to the Washrooms, and back to the cabin for the night. The light was dim and fading outside, clinging to the first fringes of night.

"All right, kittens." Nunotaba's voice. "Ten minutes till lights-out. Whose turn is it?"

"Mine—should I just pick up from where we left off?"Awatsuki was on the other side of the room, but her squeaky voice carried well.

I could practically hear Nunotaba's eyes rolling. "Yes, Awatsuki. Isn't that what we always do?"

"Okay…so…so the princess? She was in her tower, and she was still really sad."

"Girl," Nunotaba cut in, "you're going to have to spice this up, or I'm skipping your boring ass and going to the next person."

"Okay," Awatsuki squeaked. I rolled over onto my side, trying to get a glimpse of her through the rows of bunk beds. "The princess was in terrible pain—terrible, terrible pain—"

"Oh God," was Nunotaba's only comment. "Next?"

Aizono picked up the loose story threads the best she could. "While the princess was locked away in her tower, all she could think about was the prince."

I missed how the story ended, my eyelids too heavy to keep them open.

If there is a single thing I'll miss about Tokiwadai, I thought as I edged toward sleep, it's this. The quiet moments, when we were allowed to talk about forbidden things.

We had to find a way to amuse ourselves because we had nothing—no dreams, no future—other than the ones we created for ourselves.

I swallowed the two pills one at a time, the taste of chicken broth still on my tongue.

The cabin lights had been off for three hours, and Kongou had been snoring for two. I unsealed the bag and dropped the little pills into my hand. The clear bag went back into my bra, and the first pill went into my mouth. It was warm from being so close to my skin for so long, which didn't make it any easier to swallow. I popped the next one in before I lost the nerve, and winced as it clawed its way down my throat.

And then, I waited.


	6. Chapter 5

FIVE

I DIDN'T REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP; only waking. Of course I did—my body was shaking so hard that I rolled right out of bed and hit my face against the next bunk over.

Wannai must have jumped out of her skin with the sudden bang and movement of her bed, because I heard her say, "What the hell—Mikoto? Is that you?"

I couldn't get up. I felt her hands on my face, and registered she was now screaming my name, not just whispering it.

"Oh my God!" someone said. It sounded like Kongou, but I couldn't open my eyes.

"—emergency button!" Nunotaba's weight settled over my legs; I knew it was her, even as my brain came in and out of consciousness, and a white hot light was burning behind my eyelids. Someone shoved something in my mouth—rubber and hard. I could taste blood, but I wasn't sure if it had come from my tongue or my lips or…

Two pairs of hands lifted me from the ground, dropping me on some other surface. I still couldn't open my eyes; my chest was on fire. I couldn't stop shaking, and my limbs felt like they were caving in on themselves.

And then I smelled rosemary. I felt soft, cool hands pressing against my chest, then nothing at all.

Life came back to me in the form of a hard slap across the face.

"Mikoto," someone said. "Come on, I know you can hear me. You have to wake up."

I cracked my eyes open, trying not to cringe as the light flooded in. A door opened and creaked shut somewhere nearby.

"Is that her?" a new voice asked. "Are you going to sedate her?"

"No, not this one," the first voice returned. I knew that voice. It was as sweet as it had been before, only this time it had a sharper edge. Dr. Kiyama's hands came up beneath my arms and propped me up. "She's tough. She can handle it."

Something smelled horrible. Acidic and rotten all at once. My eyes flew open.

Dr. Kiyama was kneeling beside me, waving something beneath my nose.

"What—?"

The other voice I had heard belonged to a young woman. She had dark hair and pale skin, but that was all that was remarkable about her. Not realizing I was watching her, she stripped her blue scrubs off and threw them at Dr. Kiyama.

I didn't know where we were. The room was small, filled with shelves of bottles and boxes, and I couldn't smell anything besides whatever it was Dr. Kiyama had used to wake me.

"Put these on," said, pulling me to my feet whether my legs were ready or not. "Come on, Mikoto, we've got to hurry."

My body felt heavy, cracking at all my joints. But I did as I was told, and pulled the scrubs over my uniform. While I was dressing, the other woman put her hands behind her back and waited as Dr. Kiyama wrapped them together with thick silver duct tape. That finished, the doctor moved to tying the other woman's feet together.

"You're meeting them in Harvey. Make sure you take Route two-fifteen."

"I know, I know," Dr. Kiyama said as she chewed off another piece of tape and placed it over the woman's mouth. "Good luck."

"What are you doing?" I asked. My throat was scratchy, and the skin around my mouth seemed to crack as I spoke. The doctor pulled my hair back, twisting it up into a messy bun that she secured with a rubber band. The other woman watched as her ID tags were dropped over my neck and Dr. Begbie put a surgical mask over my face.

"I'll explain everything once we're out, but we can't waste time. They'll be doing rounds in twenty minutes," she said. "You can't say anything, understand? Play along."

I nodded and let her push me outside of the dark room and into the dimmed hallway of the Infirmary. Once again, my legs seemed to be failing me, but the doctor took it all in stride. She looped one of my arms over her shoulder and supported most of my weight.

"We're moving," she muttered. "Return the cameras to their normal feeds."

I looked over, but she wasn't talking to me. She was whispering to her gold swan pin.

"Not a word," she reminded me as we turned down another long hallway. We were moving so fast that we rustled the white curtains of the examination stalls as we passed them. The Anti-skns were black blurs as they stepped out of our way.

"Sorry, sorry!" Dr. Kiyama called after us. "I've got to get this one home."

I kept my eyes on the straight lines of tile passing under my feet. My head was still spinning so badly that I didn't realize we were heading outside until I heard the beep of the doctor's card passing through the lock swipe and felt the first drops of cool rain hit my scalp.

They kept the camp's enormous stadium lights on at all hours of the night; the lights stood like giants across the camp, but all they reminded me of were night football games, the smell of fresh cut grass, and the back of my dad's red Spartan sweater as he yelled for his old high school's team to run some damn offense at the top of his lungs.

It was a short walk and stumble from the back of the Infirmary to the pebbled parking lot. I actually wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or not—my sight went in and out of focus, but it was impossible to miss the sound of crunching gravel and the voice that yelled, "Everything okay over there?"

I felt, rather than saw, Dr. Kiyama tense. I tried to keep moving, to use her shoulder to prop myself up, but my legs just weren't working anymore.

When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting up, staring at the standard-issue boots of a AntiSkn soldier. He knelt down in front of me. Dr. Kiyama was saying something to him, her voice as calm as the first time I had spoken to her.

"—so sick, I offered to drive her home. I put the mask on her to make sure she didn't give the bug to anyone else."

The soldier's voice became clearer. "I hate that we always get sick from these kids."

"Would you mind helping me walk her over to my Jeep?" Dr. Kyama asked.

"If she's sick…"

"It'll just take a minute," the doctor interrupted. "And I promise that if you have so much as even the sniffles tomorrow, I'll nurse you back to health myself."

That was the voice I recognized—so sweet that it sounded like little bells. The soldier chuckled, but I felt him lift me up all the same. I tried not to lean against him, to grit my teeth against the jarring motion, but I could barely keep my head from rolling back.

"Front seat?" he asked.

Dr. Kiyama was about to respond when the AntiSkn's radio crackled to life. "Control has you on camera. Do you need assistance?"

He waited until Dr. Kiyama had opened the front passenger side door, and he set me down on the seat before replying. "Everything clear. Doctor…" He took my tags in hand, lifting them off my chest. "Dr. Rosly has the virus that's been going around. Doctor…"

"Hatairo," came the quick reply. She slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut behind her. I glanced over, watching as she fumbled to get the key in the ignition. It was the first time I noticed her hands shaking.

"Dr. Hatairo is driving her home for the night. Dr. Rosly's car will be here overnight—please inform the morning guards when they do their tally."

"Roger that. Tell them to head straight for the gate. I'll notify the watch patrol to wave them through."

The Jeep sputtered to life in a series of grinding protests. I looked out through the windshield, to the electric fence and the dark, familiar forest behind it. Dr. Kiyama reached over to fasten my seat belt.

"Man, she's out of it." The AntiSkin was back, leaning against Dr. Kiyama's window.

"I did give her some pretty strong stuff." Dr. Kiyama laughed. I felt my chest clench.

"So about tomorrow—"

"Come by and say hello, okay?" Dr. Kiyama said. "I have a break around three."

She didn't give him a chance to reply. The tires spun against the gravel and the windshield wipers squealed to life. Dr. Kiyama rolled up her window with a friendly wave, using her other hand to steer the car back and pull out of the parking space. The little green numbers on the dashboard read 2:45 a.m.

"Try to cover your face as much as possible," she muttered before flicking on the radio. I didn't recognize the song, but I recognized David Gilmour's voice, and the ebb and flow of Pink Floyd's synthesizers.

She turned the volume down, taking a deep breath as she turned out of the lot. Her fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel.

"Come on, come on," she whispered, glancing down at the clock again. There was a line of two cars in front of us, each waved forward with agonizing slowness. I thought she was going to crawl out of her skin by the time the last car pulled forward into the night.

Dr. Kiyama hit the gas too hard and the Jeep lurched forward. The seat belt snapped into a locked position when she slammed on the brakes, knocking the air out of my chest.

She rolled the window down, but I was too tired to be afraid. I pressed my hand over my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. The surgical mask brushed against my lips.

"I'm taking Dr. Rosly home. Let me just get her passes—"

"It's fine. I have you on the schedule for tomorrow at three p.m., is that correct?"

"Yes. Thank you. Please indicate Dr. Rosly will not be in."

"Understood."

I was too tired to try to control my brain's wandering fingers. When Dr. Kiyama touched me again, brushing the hair out of my face, an image bloomed to life behind my eyes. A dark-haired man, smiling broadly, with his arms around Dr. Kiyama, spinning her, and spinning her, and spinning her, until I could hear her delighted laughter in my ears.

Kiyama cracked our windows, and the air rushing by brought in the scent of rain and carried me quickly into sleep.


	7. Chapter 6

SIX

IT WAS STILL DARK OUT when I opened my eyes.

The AC blew through the vents, batting at the little yellow cardboard tree hanging down from the rearview mirror. Its vanilla fragrance was sickeningly sweet and so overwhelming that it turned my empty stomach. Mick Jagger crooned next to my ear, singing about war and peace and shelter—those kinds of lies. I tried to turn my face away from wherever the song was escaping from, but I only managed to smack my nose against the window and strain my neck.

I sat straight up and almost hanged myself on the gray seat belt.

We weren't in the Jeep anymore.

The night came back like a deep breath, complete and overwhelming all at once. The glow of the green dashboard lit the scrubs I wore, and that was enough to flood my mind with the reality of what had happened.

Smears of trees and undergrowth lined a road that was completely dark, save for the small car's weak yellow headlights. For the first time in years, I could see the stars that Tokiwadai's monstrous lights had faded into nonexistence. They were so bright, so clear that they couldn't have been real. I didn't know what was more shocking—the endless stretch of road or the sky. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes.

"Don't forget to breathe, Mikoto," came the voice beside me.

I pulled the surgical mask down from over my mouth as I looked over. Dr. Kiyama's dark hair was around her face, sweeping against her shoulders. In the time it had taken us to get from Tokiwadai to…wherever we were, she had stripped off her scrubs and changed into a black T-shirt and jeans. The night stained the skin under her eyes like bruises. I hadn't noticed the sharp angles that made up her nose and chin.

"You haven't been in a car for some time, huh?" She laughed, but she was right. I was more aware of the forward lurch of the car than I was of my own heartbeat.

"Hatairo-seisei-"

"Call me Kiyama," she interrupted, a bit harsher than before. I don't know if I reacted to the abrupt change of tone or not, but she immediately followed with, "I'm sorry, it's been a very long night and I could use a cup of coffee."

According to the dashboard, it was 4:30 a.m. I had only had two hours of sleep, but I felt more alert than I had all day. All week. All my life.

Kiyama waited until the Rolling Stones had finished out their song before turning down the radio. "All they play are oldies now. I thought it was a joke at first, or something Washington wanted, but apparently that's all that gets requested these days." She snuck a look at me out of the corner of her eye. "I can't imagine why."

"Dr.—Kiyama," I said. Even my voice was stronger. "Where are we? What's going on?"

Before she could answer, there was a cough from the backseat. I twisted around despite the pain in my neck and chest. Curled up there in a protective little ball was another kid, about my age, or maybe a year older. That other kid. Kani—Kakeno—whatever—from the Infirmary, and he was looking far better than I felt as he slept on.

"We just left Shizuoka," Kiyama said. "That's where we met with some friends that helped me switch cars and remove Kakine-san back there from the medical trunk we had to smuggle him out in."

"Wait…"

"Oh, don't worry," Kiyama said quickly. "We made sure it had air holes."

Like that was my biggest concern?

"They just let you take it out to the car?" I asked. "Without even checking it?"

She glanced at me again, and I was proud of the look of surprise there. "The doctors at Tokiwadai use those trunks to transport medical waste. The camp controllers started forcing the doctors to dump the waste themselves when the budget got cut. Sarah and I had duty for this week."

"Sarah?" I interrupted. "Dr. Rogers?"

She hesitated a split second before nodding.

"Why did you tie her up—why did she—why are you helping us?"

She answered my question with one of her own.

"Have you ever heard of the judgment's League?"

"Bits and pieces," I said. And only in whispers. If the rumors were true, they were an antigovernment group. They were the ones the younger kids—the later arrivals to Tokiwadai—claimed were trying to take down the camp system. The ones that supposedly hid kids so they couldn't be taken. I had always assumed they were our generation's version of a fairy tale. Nothing that good could ever be true.

"We," Kiyama said, letting that word sink in before continuing, "are an organization dedicated to helping children affected by the government's new laws. Matthai Reese—have you heard of him? He was formerly an intelligence adviser to Aliester."

"He started the judgment's League?"

She nodded. "After his daughter died and he realized what was going to happen to the kids who survived, he left D.C. and tried to expose all of the testing that was happening at the camps. shinano-mainichi-shimbun, the Post, you name it—none of them would run the story, because, by then, things were bad enough that Aliester had them under his thumb for 'national security' reasons, and the smaller papers folded along with the economy."

"So…" I was trying to wrap my mind around this, wondering if I had misheard her. "So he created the judgment's League to…help us?"

Kiyama's face lit up in a smile. "Yes, that's exactly right."

Then why did you help only me?

The question sprung up like a lone weed; ugly, and deeply rooted. I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to clear the rumblings in my brain, but I couldn't tear it out. There was a strange feeling rising in my chest that followed—like something heavy was trying to work its way up from my center. It might have been a scream.

"What about the others?" I didn't recognize my own voice.

"The others? You mean the other children?" Kiyama's eyes were focused only on the road in front of us. "They can wait. Their situation wasn't as pressing as yours was. When the time is right, I'm sure we'll go back for them, but in the meantime, don't worry. They'll live."

I recoiled almost instantly at her tone more than her words. The way she said that—they'll live—was so dismissive, I half expected to see a hand come up into the air to wave me off. Don't worry. Don't worry at the way they've been mistreated, don't worry about their punishments, don't worry about the guns constantly trained on their backs. God, I wanted to throw up.

I had left them behind, all of them. I had left Kongou, even after I promised we'd get out together. After everything she had done to protect me, I had just left her there.…

"Oh—no, Mikoto. I'm sorry, I didn't even realize how that would sound," she said, turning back and forth between me and the road. "I just meant…I don't even know what I'm saying. I was there for weeks, and I still can't begin to imagine what it must have been like. I shouldn't act like I know what you went through."

"I just—I left them," I told her, and it didn't matter that my voice was breaking, or that my hands had come up to clutch my elbows to keep from grabbing her. "Why did you only take me? Why couldn't you save the others? Why?"

"I told you before," she said softly. "It had to be you. They would have killed you otherwise. The others aren't in danger."

"They're always in danger," I said, and wondered if she had stepped a single foot beyond the Infirmary. How could she not have seen? How could she not have heard it, felt it, breathed it in? The air at Tokiwadai was so coated in fear that you could taste it like vomit at the back of your throat.

It had taken me less than a day in that place to see that hatred and terror came in circles, and that they fed off each other. The Anti-Skins hated us, so they had to make us fear them. And we feared them, which only made us hate them even more. There was an unspoken understanding that we were at Thurmond because of each other. Without the Anti-Skns there would be no camp, but without the Espers freaks there would be no need for Anti-skins.

So whose fault was it? Everyone's? No one's? Ours?

"You should have just left me—you should have taken someone else, someone who was better—they'll be punished because of this, I know it. They'll hurt them, and it's my fault for going, for leaving them behind." I knew I wasn't making sense, but I couldn't seem to connect my thoughts to my tongue. That feeling, the heart-swallowing guilt, the sadness that took hold and never let itself be shaken free—how did you tell someone that? How did you put that into words?

Kiyama's lips parted, but no sound came out for several moments. She took a firm hold of the wheel and guided the car over to the side of the road. Her foot came off the gas and she allowed the car to roll to a hesitant stop. When the wheels finally ceased spinning, I reached for the door handle, a spike of total and complete grief cutting through me.

"What are you doing?" Kiyama asked.

She had pulled over because she wanted me to get out, hadn't she? I would have done the same thing if our situations had been flipped. I understood.

I leaned back away from her arm as she reached over, but instead of pushing the door open, she slammed it shut and let her fingers linger over my shoulder. I cringed, pressing back against the seat as hard as I could, trying to avoid her touch. This was the worst I'd felt in years—my head was humming, a sure sign I was dangerously close to losing control of it. If she had any thoughts about hugging me, or stroking my arm, or anything my mom would have done, my reaction was more than enough to convince her not to try.

"Listen to me very carefully," she said, and it didn't seem to matter to her that at any moment a car or a AntiSkns could come charging up the road. She waited until I was looking her in the eye. "The most important thing you ever did was learn how to survive. Do not let anyone make you feel like you shouldn't have—like you deserved to be in that camp. You are important, and you matter. You matter to me, you matter to the League, and you matter to the future—" Her voice caught. "I will never hurt you, or yell at you, or let you go hungry. I will protect you for the rest of my life. I will never fully understand what you've been through, but I will always listen when you need to get something out. Do you understand?"

Something warm bloomed in my chest, even as my breath hitched in my throat. I wanted to say something to that, to thank her, to ask her to repeat it again just to be sure I hadn't misunderstood or misheard her.

"I can't pretend like it never happened," I told her. I still felt the vibrations of the fence under my skin.

"You shouldn't—you should never forget. But part of surviving is being able to move on. There's this word," she continued, turning to study her fingers gripping the wheel. "Nothing like it exists in the English language. It's Portuguese. Saudade. Do you know that one?"

I shook my head. I didn't know half of the words in my own language.

"It's more…there's no perfect definition. It's more of an expression of feeling—of terrible sadness. It's the feeling you get when you realize something you once lost is lost forever, and you can never get it back again." Kiyama took a deep breath. "I thought of that word often at Tokiwadai. Because the lives you had before—that we all had before—we can never get them back. But there's a beginning in an end, you know? It's true that you can't reclaim what you had, but you can lock it up behind you. Start fresh."

I did understand what she was saying, and I understood that her words were coming from a true, caring place, but after having my life broken down into rotations for so long, the thought of dividing it up even further was unimaginable.

"Here," she said, reaching inside the collar of her shirt. She pulled a long silver chain up over her head, and the last thing to reveal itself was the black circular pendant, a little bigger than the size of my thumb, hanging from it.

I held out my hand and she dropped the necklace into it. The chain was still warm from where it had been kept against her skin, but I was surprised to find that the pendant wasn't anything more than plastic.

"We call that a panic button," she said. "If you squeeze it for twenty seconds, it activates, and any agents nearby will respond. I don't imagine you'll ever need to use it, but I'd like you to keep it. If you ever feel scared, or if we get separated, I want you to press it."

"It'll track me?" Something about that idea made me vaguely uncomfortable, but I slipped the chain on anyway.

"Not unless you activate it," Kiyama promised. "We designed them that way so that the AntiSkins wouldn't be able to accidentally pick up on a signal being transmitted from them. I promise, you're in control here, Mikoto."

I plucked the pendant up and held it between my thumb and index finger. When I realized how dirty my fingers were, and how much dirt was still packed under my nails, I dropped it. Me and nice things didn't go well together.

"Can I ask you another question?" I waited until she had finally nudged the car back onto the road, and even then it had taken me a few tries to get the words out. "If the judgment's League was formed to end the camps, why did you even bother getting me and Kakine? Why didn't you just blow up the Control Tower while you were there?"

Kiyama ran a hand over her lips. "I'm not interested in those kinds of operations," she said. "I'd much rather be focused on the real issue, which is helping you kids. You can destroy a factory, and they'll just build another. But once you destroy a life, that's it. You never get that person back."

"Do people have any idea?" I squeezed out. "Do the people know that they're not reforming us at all?"

"I'm not sure," Kiyama said. "Some will always live in denial about the camps, and they'll believe what they want to believe about them. I think most people know there's something off, but they're in too deep with their own problems to call into question how the government is handling things at the camps. I think they want to trust that you're all being treated well. Honestly, there are…there are so few of you left now."

I sat straight up again. "What?"

This time, Kiyama couldn't look at me. "I didn't want to have to be the one to tell you this, but things are much worse now than they were before. The last estimate the League put together said that two percent of the country's population of ten- to seventeen-year-olds were in reform camps."

"What about the rest?" I said, but I already knew the answer. "The ninety-eight percent?"

"Most of them fell victim to IAAN."

"They died," I corrected. "All the kids? Everywhere?"

"No, not everywhere. There have been a few cases of it reported in other countries, but here in Japão…" Kiyama took a deep breath. "I don't know how much to tell you now, because I don't want to overwhelm you, but it seems like the onset of IAAN or Esper powers is linked to puberty—"

"How many?" They really hadn't learned anything new in all the years I was trapped in Tokiwadai? "How many of us are left?"

"According to the government, there are approximately a quarter of a million children under the age of eighteen, but our estimate is closer to a tenth of that."

I was going to be sick. I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned forward, putting my head between my legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kiyama's hand come down, as if she was going to rest it on my back, but I twisted away again. For a long time, the only sound between us was the tires turning against the old road.

I kept my face down and eyes shut long enough for Kiyama to worry. "Are you still feeling queasy? We had to give you a high enough dosage of penicillin to induce seizurelike symptoms. Trust me, if we could have done it any other way we would have, but we needed something serious enough for the Anti-Skns to actually bring you back to the Infirmary."

Kakine snored behind us until eventually even that faded into the sound of the tires rolling down the old road. My stomach twisted at the thought of asking exactly how many miles we were from Tokiwadai, how far away the past really was.

"I know," I said after a while. "Thank you—I mean it."

Kiyama reached over, and before I could think to stop her, her hand ran a smooth path from my shoulder down my arm. I felt something warm tickle at the back of my mind, and recognized its warning trill. The first white-hot flash from her mind came and went so fast, I saw the scene like a photo negative. A young girl with white-blond hair in a high chair, her mouth frozen in a toothless grin. The next image stayed, lingered long enough for me to recognize I was seeing fire. Fire—everywhere, climbing the walls of the room, burning with all the intensity of the sun. This…memory? It trembled, shuddered hard enough that I had to clench my teeth to keep from getting nauseated. Inside Kiyama's memory, a silver door with 456B stamped over it in black lettering slid into view. A hand flashed out, reaching for the handle—Kiyama's pale, slender fingers, outstretched—only to pull away at its molten hot touch. A hand lashed out against the wood, then a foot. The image wavered, curling at the edges as the door disappeared behind the dark smoke that spewed through its cracks and joints.

The same dark door shut, and I jolted back, pulling my arm out from under hers.

What the hell? I thought, my heart racing in my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Still?" Kiyama said. "Oh, Mikoto, I'm so sorry. When we switch cars, I'll be sure to ask for something to help ease your stomach."

She, like all the others, was oblivious.

"You know…" Kiyama said after a while. She kept her eyes on the dark road, to where it met the brightening sky. "It was brave of you to take the pills and come with me. I knew there was more to you than the quiet girl I met in the Infirmary."

I'm not brave. If I had been, I would have owned up to what I really was, no matter how terrible. I would have worked, eaten, and slept alongside the other Oranges, or at least stepped out of the shadow of the Yellows and Reds.

Those kids had been so proud of their powers. They made a point of harassing the camp controllers at every turn, hurting the Anti-Skns, setting their cabins and the Washrooms on fire, trying to talk their way out of the gate or driving the adults insane by putting images of murdered families or cheating wives in their heads.

It was impossible to miss them, to not step aside and turn away when they passed. I had let myself sit like a coward in the dull, endless stream of gray and green, never drawing attention, never once letting myself believe that I could or should escape. I think that all they wanted was to find a way out, and to do it themselves. They had burned so bright, and fought so hard to get free.

But none of them had made it to sixteen.

There are a thousand ways to tell if someone is lying to you. You don't need to be able to glimpse into their mind to catch all of the little signs of insecurity and discomfort. More often than not, all you have to do is look at them. If they glance to the left while they're talking to you, if they add too many details to a story, if they answer a question with another question. My dad, a cop, taught me and twenty-four other kids about it in second grade, when he gave his presentation on Stranger Danger.

But Kiyama had no tells. She told me things about the world that didn't seem possible, not until we were able to pick up a radio station and a solemn voice bled through the speakers to confirm it all.

"Yes!" she cried, slapping her palm against the wheel. "Finally!"

"The president has reportedly refused an invitation from Britain's prime minister to discuss possible relief measures for the world economic crisis and how to pump life back into the sagging global stock markets. When asked to explain his decision, the president cited the United Kingdom's role in the UN's economic sanctions against the nation."

Kiyama fiddled with the tuning again. The newscaster's voice faded in and out. At the first burst of static, I jumped.

"…forty-five women were arrested in Amakusa, yesterday for attempting to evade the birth registry. The women will be detained in a corrections facility until their children are born, after which the infants will be removed for the safety of their mothers. The attorney general had this to say…"

Another voice came through, this one deep and raspy. "In accordance with New Order 15, President Aliester issued an arrest warrant for all persons involved with this dangerous activity.…"

"Aliester?" I said, glancing over to Kiyama. "He's still the president?"

He had only just been elected when the first cases of IAAN appeared, and I couldn't really remember anything about him, other than that he had green eyes and long white hair. And even that I only knew because the camp controllers had strung up pictures of his son, Accelerator, all over camp as proof to us that we, too, could be reformed. I had a sudden, sharp memory of the last time I had been in the Infirmary, and the way his picture had seemed to watch me.

She shook her head, visibly disgusted. "He granted himself a term extension until the Esper situation is, and I quote, resolved so as to make sure the Japão is safe from telekinetic acts of terror and violence. He even suspended Congress."

"How did he manage that?" I asked.

"With his so-called wartime powers," Kiyama said. "Maybe a year or two after you were taken, some Esper kids nearly succeeded in blowing up the Capitol."

"Nearly? What does that mean?"

Kiyama glanced over again, studying my face. "It means that they only succeeded in blowing up the Senate portion of it. President Aliester's control of the government was only supposed to last until new congressional elections could be held, but then the riots started when the Anti-Skins started pulling kids from schools without their parents' permission. And then, of course, the economy tanked and the country defaulted on its debt. You'd be surprised how little voice you have when you lose everything."

"And everyone just let him?" The thought turned my stomach.

"No, no one just let him. It's chaos out here right now, Mikoto. Aliester keeps trying to tighten his control, and every day more and more people are rioting or breaking whatever laws we have left just to get food on the table."

"My dad was killed in a riot."

Kiyama turned around to face the backseat so quickly the car actually swerved into the other lane. I had known Kakine was awake for at least ten minutes; his breathing had become much lighter, and he had stopped doing his weird little lip licking and grunts. I just hadn't wanted to talk to him, or to interrupt Kiyama.

"The people in our neighborhood robbed his store for food, and he couldn't even defend himself."

"How are you feeling?" Sugar coated Kiyama's words, almost as sweet as the vanilla air freshener twirling around in front of us.

"Okay, I guess." He sat up, trying to pat down his shoulder-length dirty blond hair into something presentable. Kakine was round all thin; his cheeks hollow and his uniform shirt might have been a size too small, but he began to grow more than the other children in his cabin. He had an head on me. He couldn't have been more than a year older than I was.

"I'm glad," Kiyama said. "There's a water bottle back there for you if you need it. We'll be stopping in about an hour to switch cars again."

"Where are we going?"

"We're meeting with a friend in Kamazura. He'll have a change of clothes and identification papers for both of you. We're almost there now."

I thought for sure Kakine had dropped right back off into sleep until he asked, "Where are we going after that?"

The radio flashed to life, snatching up bits and pieces of Ed Sheeran, before losing it again to static and silence.

I could feel Kakine's eyes burning holes into the back of my neck. I tried not to turn around to stare right back, but it was the closest I had been to a boy my age since we had been sorted. After years of living on opposite sides of the main trail in Tokiwadai, it was unnerving to suddenly be presented with all his little details. It was annoying, suddenly being presented with all its small details. Freckles I had not noticed on the face, for example, or the way his eyes looked very far apart.

What was I supposed to say to him?

"We're going to regroup with the Judgment at their southern headquarters. After we get there, you can decide if you want to stay," she said. "I know you've been through a lot, so you don't have to make any choices now. Just know that you'll be safe if you stay with me."

The feeling of freedom rose in me so fast that I had to chase it down to squash it along with my swelling heart. It was still too dangerous. There was a chance that the Anti-Skns could catch up to us, that I'd be back in camp or dead before we even got anywhere.

Kakine watched me, his dark eyes narrowed. I watched as his fingers seemed to melt into a pale mass toward my leg. A small electric wire reacted to approach the mass and hissed in my for as a warning not to approach. The same one I always felt when my abilities wanted to be let out and used.

What the hell? My fingers dug into the armrests, but I didn't turn back around to see if he was still at it. I glanced up into the rearview mirror only once, watching as he leaned back against the seat and crossed his arms over his chest with a huff. A sore at the corner of his mouth looked angry and red, like he had been scratching at the scab.

"I want to go where I can do what I couldn't do at Tokiwadai,"Kakine said, finally.

I didn't want to know what he meant by that.

"I'm a lot more powerful than you think," he continued. "You won't need anyone else after you see what I can do."

Kiyama smiled. "That's what I'm counting on. I knew you'd understand."

"What about you, Mikoto?" she asked, turning to me. "Are you willing to make a difference?"

If I said I no, would they let me go? If I asked to go to my parents' house, would they take me there—no questions asked? To Tsu, if I wanted to see my grandmother? Out of the country, if that's what I really wanted?

They were both looking at me, wearing mirrored looks of urgency and excitement. I wish I could have felt it. I wish I could have shared in the security they were feeling about their choice, but I wasn't absolutely certain of what I wanted. I only knew what I didn't want.

"Take me anywhere," I said. "Anywhere but home."

Kakine picked at the sore with grubby nails until blood appeared and he licked it off his lips and the tip of his fingers. Watching me, like he expected me to ask for a taste.

I turned back to Kiyama, a question dying on my lips. Because for a second, just one, all I could think about was the sight of fire and smoke rising from the sharp lines of her shoulders, and the door she couldn't open.


	8. Chapter 7

SEVEN

WE REACHED KAMAKURA'S CITY LIMITS at seven o'clock in the morning, just as the sun decided to reappear from behind the thick layer of clouds. It colored the nearby trees a faint violet, and glinted off the wall of mist that had gathered over the asphalt. By then, we had driven past several highway exits that were barricaded with junk, rails, or deserted cars—done up either by the National Guard to contain hostile towns and cities, or by the residents themselves, to keep unwanted looters and visitors out of already hard-hit areas. The road itself, however, had been silent for hours on end, which meant that we were due for some sort of human interaction sooner or later.

It came sooner, in the form of a red semitruck. I scooted down in my seat as it whipped past us. It was headed clear in the opposite direction, but I had a perfect view of the gold swan painted on its side.

"They're everywhere," Kiyama said, following my line of sight. "That was probably a shipment to Tokiwadai."

It was the first true sign of life we'd seen in all of our driving—most likely because we were cruising down Dead Man's Highway in the middle of Butt-Freaking Nowhere—but that single truck was enough to scare Kiyama.

"Get in the backseat," she said, "and stay down."

I did as I was told. Unbuckling my seat belt, I twisted between the front seats and threaded my legs through them.

Kakine watched me with glassy eyes. At one point, I felt his hand slip against my arm, like he was trying to help me. I recoiled, slipping down in the space between the backseat and the front. My back was against the door and my knees were against my chest, but we were still too close. When he grinned, it was enough to make my skin crawl.

There were boys at Tokiwadai. Plenty of them, in fact. But any activity that involved the commingling of the sexes—whether that was eating together, sharing cabins, or even passing one another on the way to the Washrooms—was strictly forbidden. The Anti-Skns and camp controllers enforced the rule with the same level of severity they did with the kids who—however intentionally or unintentionally—used their abilities. Which, of course, only drove everyone's already hormone-drunk brains crazier, and turned some of my cabinmates into an elite breed of covert stalkers.

Maybe I didn't remember the "right" way to interact with someone of the opposite gender, but I'm pretty sure Kakine didn't, either.

"Fun, huh?" he said. I thought he was kidding, until I saw the too-eager look in his eyes. I pressed up against the door and kept my eyes on Kiyama, but it wasn't far enough.

We are nothing alike, I realized. We had been brought to the same place, lived in the same kind of terror, but he…he was so…

I needed to change the subject and distract him.

"Do you think Tokiwadai has noticed we're gone?" I asked, breaking the silence.

Kiyama switched off her headlights. "I would think so. The Anti-Skns don't have the manpower to launch a full hunt for us, but I'm positive they've put two and two together about what you are."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "That we're Orange? I thought you said they already knew. That was why we had to leave so quickly."

"They were on the verge of finding out," Kiyama explained. "They were testing the Orange and Red frequencies in that Capacity Down Control. I don't think any of them expected it to work that quickly—that's why we had to get you out, and fast."

"Frequencies," Kakine repeated. "You mean they added something to it?"

"That's exactly right." Kiyama smiled at him in the rearview mirror. Judgment got wind of their new method of trying to weed out kids who had been labeled incorrectly when they were brought into camp. You know that adults can't hear the Capacity down Control, I'm sure."

We both nodded.

"The scientists there have been working on frequencies that only certain kinds of Esper youth can pick up and process. There are some wavelengths you all can hear, and others that only Greens, or Blues, or—in this instance—Oranges can detect."

It made sense, but it didn't make it any less horrifying.

"You know, I've been wondering," Kiyama began. "How did you two do it? You especially, Mikoto. You went into that camp so young. How did you get around their sorting?"

"I…just did," I said. "I told the man who was supposed to run my tests that I was a level 1 Green. He listened."

"That's weak," Kakine interrupted, looking right at me. "You probably didn't even have to use your powers."

I didn't like to think of them as powers—that seemed to imply they were something to celebrate. And they were most definitely not.

"I told someone to trade places with me when they started separating all the O's and R's out. Didn't want to go down with them, you know?" Kakine leaned forward. "So I took one of the new Greens side that was my age before the tests, and I made a mask to your face to me and a mask with my face to him with my dark matter to make it like me. Cool huh?"

The disgust coiled in my gut. He didn't feel sorry about doing any of this, that was clear. Maybe I had lied about what I was, but I hadn't damned another kid to do so. Was that what having control over your abilities turned you into? Some kind of monster—someone who could do whatever you wanted, because no one was capable of stopping you?

Was that what being powerful was like?

"Huh," Kiyama said. "Can you do the same, Mikoto?"

No. Not at all, in fact. I looked down at my hands, to the dark mud still caked under my fingernails. The thought of revealing exactly what I could do made them shake in a way I hadn't expected. "I just see things."

At least, as far as I knew.

"Wow…I just…wow. I know I keep saying this, but you two are really something amazing. I keep thinking of all the things you could do—how much help you'll be to us. Incredible."

Twisting around, I lifted my head just enough to look out to the road. Behind me, I felt Kakine grab a few loose strands of my hair and begin to twirl them around his fingers. I could see the reflection of my face in the rearview mirror—the big eyes; thick, browns brows. hazer hairs.

I shouldn't have, but I took the bait. Kakine barely had time to brace himself before I whirled around and slapped that same clammy hand back down into his lap. My next breath caught in my throat. Do not touch me, I wanted to say; don't think I won't break every single finger on that hand. But he was grinning at me, his tongue on his cold sore, his hand rising again. Only this time, he wagged his fingers in my direction, taunting. I leaned forward, ready to grab that same wrist, to shut the pig down cold, hard, and fast.

But that was exactly what he wanted. The realization flowed thick and slow through me, inching its way to my guts. He wanted me to show him what I could do, to be willing to fuel my abilities with the same kind of viciousness pumping through him.

I turned my back on him again, my fists tightening with his triumphant chuckles.

"Everything okay back there?" Kiyama called over her shoulder. "Hang on tight, we're almost there."

Whatever Kamakura normally looked like, it was that much worse under the cover of gray clouds and a layer of misty rain. Strange and terrible enough to distract even Kakine from the games he was playing with me.

The deserted shopping centers with broken storefronts were disturbing enough before we cut into the first neighborhood of little brown and gray and white houses. We passed a number of empty cars along the street and in driveways, some with bright orange FOR SALE signs still stuck in the back window, but all of them covered in a thick skin of brown, rotting leaves. The cars were surrounded by piles of junk and boxes—furniture, rugs, computers. Entire rooms full of rusting, useless electronics.

"What happened here?" I asked.

"It's a little hard to explain, but do you remember what I told you about the economy? After the attack in D.C., the government was thrown into a tailspin, and one thing led to another. We couldn't pay off our national debt, we couldn't provide money to the states, we couldn't provide benefits, we couldn't pay government employees. Even small towns like this one didn't escape. People lost their jobs when companies failed, and then they lost their homes because they could no longer pay for them. The whole thing is terrible."

"But where is everyone?"

"In tent cities, outside of the big cities like Kanto and Tokyo, trying to find work. I know a lot of people are trying to go west because they think there's going to be more work and food available, but…well, I imagine it'll be safer. There's a lot of looting and vigilante groups roaming about here."

I was almost afraid to ask. "What about the police? Why didn't they stop them?"

Kiyama bit her bottom lip. "It's like I just told you—the states couldn't afford to pay their salaries, so they were let go. Most of the police work is done by volunteers now, or the National Guard. That's why you need to stay close to me, okay?"

It only got worse when we passed the elementary school.

The pastel jungle gym, or whatever was left of it, was stained black and twisting toward the ground. Clusters of birds were perched along its broken backbone, watching us as we blew past the stop sign and turned the corner.

We passed what must have once been the cafeteria, but the entire right side of the building had crumbled in on itself. The rainbow mural of faces and suns painted on the other side of the building was visible just beyond the tangled web of yellow police tape blocking off the wreckage.

"Someone planted a bomb in the cafeteria, just before the first Collection," Kiyama said. "Set it off during lunchtime."

"The government?" Kakine pressed, but Kiyama didn't have an answer for him. She switched her blinker on as she made another right, signaling her turn to no one in particular.

A city with no people.

My breath fogged up the window as we left that neighborhood behind and sped toward another strip mall. We passed a nail salon, The Julian Restaurant's, and another nail salon before Kiyama finally pulled into a gas station.

I saw the other car immediately—a tan SUV, a kind I had never seen before. The man leaning against it wasn't pumping gas. That would have been impossible. All of the gas pumps were beaten in, their hoses and nozzles strewn across the concrete.

Kiyama honked, but the man had already spotted us and was waving. He was young, too, at least as young as Kiyama, with a tall build and with blond hair swept back. As we got closer, the smile on his face bloomed into something brilliant, and I recognized him then as the man from Kiyama's thoughts. The one she had pictured in dazzling colors and lights as we left Tokiwadai.

Kiyama barely had the car in park before she threw her door open and bolted straight for him. I heard her let out a sharp laugh as she threw her arms around his neck, knocking into him with so much force that the sunglasses flew off his face.

Kakine's sweaty palm touched the spot where my neck met my shirt collar, giving me a light squeeze, and that was it for me. I pushed the car door open and stepped outside, whether Kiyama wanted me to or not.

The air was damp with a thin mist of rain, brightening the trees and grass into an electric green. It clung to my cheeks and hair, a welcome relief after spending the last few hours confined with Kakine the Mouth Breather, who seemed to be coated with something perpetually sticky.

"—they found Aisa about a half hour after you left," the man said as I walked up. "They sent two units after you. Did you run into any trouble?"

"None." Kiyama had an arm around his middle. "But I'm not surprised. They're stretched so thin right now. But where are your—"

Keitz shook his head sharply, a shadow passing over his face. "I couldn't get them out."

Kiyama's whole body seemed to slump. "Oh…I'm sorry."

"It's fine. Looks like you had more success than I did—is she all right?" Both of them turned to look at me.

"Ah—Keitz, this is Mikoto," she said. "Mikoto, this is my…this is Keitz."

"Such a boring introduction!" Keitz clucked his tongue. "They've been hiding the pretty ones at Tokiwadai, I see."

He held out his hand to me. A large palm, five fingers, hairy knuckles. Normal. By the way I stared, you would have thought his skin was covered in scales. My hand stayed pressed flat against my thigh. I took a step closer to Kiyama.

There wasn't a gun in his hand, or a knife, or a Capacity down machine, but I could see cuts and bruises, some fresh, crisscrossing the back of his hand, all the way to his wrist, where the angry red lines disappeared beneath the sleeves of his white shirt. It was only when he pulled his hand back that I noticed a spray of small red spots on his right shirt cuff.

Keitz's face tightened when he saw where I was looking. That same hand disappeared behind Kiyama's back, tightening around her waist.

"Total heartbreaker, right?" Kiyama glanced up at him. "She'll be perfect for inside jobs. Who could say no to that face? An Orange."

Keitz let out an appreciative whistle. "Damn."

People who valued Oranges. Imagine that.

"Is Dr. Rosly all right?" I pressed.

Keitz only looked confused.

"She means Himegame Aisa," Kiyama said. "The name Rosly was just her cover."

"She's fine," Keitz said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "As far as I know they're still questioning her. I'm sure our eyes in Tokiwadai will update us if anything changes."

My hands suddenly felt numb. "Is Kiyama your name?"

She laughed. "Yes, but my last name is Harumi, not Hatairo."

I nodded, only because I didn't know what else to do or say.

"Didn't you say there were two of them?" Keitz was staring over my shoulder. On cue, I heard a door open and slam shut behind me.

"There he is," Kiyama said, clucking like a proud mother hen. "Kakine, get over here! I want you to meet your new comrade. He'll be driving with us to Hakone."

Kakine strode up and took the man's hand before Keitz had the chance to offer it.

"Now," Kiyama said, clapping her hands together. "We don't have much time, but we need you to wash up and change into something a little less conspicuous."

The SUV let out a steady chime as Keitz opened one of its rear doors. As he turned, a few scattered rays of sunlight caught the metal handle of the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. I took a step back as he reached for something inside the car that I couldn't see.

It was stupid of me not to have expected one or both of them to be packing some kind of heat, but my stomach tightened all the same. I turned away, looking at the splotches of old oil tattooed on the pavement, and waited for the car door to slam shut again.

"Here you go," Keitz said, passing us each a black backpack. My fellow freak snatched his, checking its contents like it was a party favor bag.

"It looks like the bathrooms in the station still have some running water. I wouldn't try drinking it though," Keitz continued. "There's a change of clothes and some necessities in there. Don't take a million years, but feel free to wash that camp off you."

Wash Tokiwadai off me? Rub it off like a splatter of mud? I may have been able to erase everyone else's memories, but I couldn't scrub away my own.

I took my bag without a word, the beginnings of a headache rumbling at the base of my skull. I knew what that meant well enough to take a step back. My heel caught on the uneven cement, sending me stumbling toward the hard ground. I threw out my arms in a lame attempt to reclaim my balance, but the only solid thing I found was Keitz's arm.

He may have thought he was being chivalrous by catching me, but he should have let me fall. My brain released a blissful little sigh as it went tumbling into Keitz's thoughts. All at once, the pressure that had been building in the back of my mind released, sending a tingle racing down my spine. I gritted my teeth at the sinking sensation, anger flooding my system as I tried to yank myself away.

Unlike Kiyama's memories, which came and went like fluttering eyelashes, Keitz's thoughts seemed almost lethargic…velvety and murky. They didn't piece themselves together so much as seep into one another—like ink dropped into a glass of water, the dark mass stretching and slithering until it finally polluted everything that had once been clean.

I was Keitz, and Keitz was staring down at two dark shapes—two dark sacks covered their heads, but it was obvious that one was a man and the other a woman. It was the latter that had my heart thrumming in my ears. The strength of her sobbing shook her entire body, but she never stopped struggling against the plastic ties binding her hands and feet.

Rain came down around us like an afterthought, running down through the gutters of the nearby buildings. Through the filter of Keitz's mind, it sounded like static. Two enormous black Dumpsters came into focus out of the corner of my eye, and it was only then that I realized we were in an alley, and we were alone.

Keitz's hand—my hand—reached out and ripped the hood off the woman, sending her dark hair flying over her face.

But it wasn't a woman at all. It was a girl, no older than I was, wearing a set of dark green clothes. A uniform. A camp uniform.

Tears mixed with rain, dripping down over her cheeks into her mouth, Her colorless lips formed the shape please and her eyes seemed to scream no, but there was a gun in my hand, silver and shining despite the low light. The same gun that was tucked in the back of Keitz's jeans. The same one that was now pointed at the girl's forehead.

The gun jumped in my hand as it went off, but in that instant, the flash lit up her terrified face, an unfinished scream drowned out by the bang. A spray of blood flicked up over my hand as her face seemed to cave in on itself, staining the dark jacket I wore…and the edge of the white cuff beneath it.

The boy dies after to catch up with brass knuckles, only Keitz didn't bother to even take his hood off. The bodies were lifted into the Dumpsters. I shrank back and away from the scene, watching it grow smaller, and smaller, and smaller until the dark, cloudy haze of Keitz's mind swallowed it whole.

I tugged myself free, coming up from the inky pool with a sharp gasp.

Keitz released my arm instantly, but Kiyama dove forward and would have taken his place if I hadn't raised both hands to stop her.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You've gone pale."

"I'm okay," I said, trying to keep my voice calm and steady. "Still feeling a little woozy from the medicine."

Kakine let out an annoyed sigh behind me. He was hopping from foot to foot, grumbling impatiently. He slid a suspicious eye in my direction, and for half a heartbeat I was afraid he knew exactly what had just happened. But, no—connections like that were fast, and lasted only a few seconds, no matter how long it felt to me.

I kept my eyes on the ground, carefully avoiding both the adults' faces. I couldn't bring myself to look at Keitz, not after seeing what he had done—and I knew if I looked at Kiyama, I'd give myself away in an instant. She'd ask me what was wrong, and I wouldn't be able to lie, not convincingly. I'd have to tell her that her boyfriend or partner or whatever he was had left the brains of two kids splattered all over an alleyway.

Keitz tried to offer me a plastic water bottle from the front seat, his mouth stretched in a thin line. My eyes settled again on the tiny red flecks staining his cuff.

He killed them. The words echoed through my head. It could have happened days, maybe even weeks ago, but it didn't seem likely. Wouldn't he have changed his shirt, or tried to clean it off? And then he came here—to kill us, too?

Keitz smiled at me, all of his teeth showing. Smiled. Like he hadn't just snuffed out two lives at point-blank range and watched the rain carry their blood into the gutters.

My hands were shaking so hard now that I had to fist them around the backpack to keep him from noticing. I thought I had escaped the monsters, that I'd left them locked up behind an electric fence. But the shadows were alive, and they had chased me here.

I'm next.

I swallowed the scream working its way up my throat, and smiled right back at him, my insides twisting. Because I had no doubt, not one single wisp of uncertainty, that if he knew what I had just seen, Kiyama would spend the next few days bleaching my blood out of his shirt, too.

She knows, I thought, following Kakin Teitoku into the gas station. Kiyama, who smelled like rosemary, who carried me down the hallway, who saved my life. She must know.

And she kissed him anyway.

The inside of the gas station looked like it had been ravaged by wild animals, and there was a fairly good chance that it had been. Muddy paw tracks in all shapes and sizes created dizzying patterns on the floor, cutting over sticky patches of red and brown to the shelves of food.

The store smelled like sour milk, though the drink cases were still flickering with intermittent electricity. Most of them had been cleared out of sodas and beer, but there was a surprising amount left—and no wonder. The store had marked up milk to ten dollars a carton. The same went for the food. Some shelves had rows of untouched chip bags and candy bars, all priced like they were endangered, precious goods. Others had been picked clean, or were exploding with popcorn and pretzels after their bags had been gutted.

I had a plan before I even realized it.

While Kakine entertained himself by fiddling with the soda dispenser, I grabbed a few bags of chips and chocolate bars. A flash of guilt cut through me as I stuffed them in my bag, but, really, who was I even stealing from? Who was going to call the cops on me?

"There's only one bathroom," Kakine announced. "I'm using it first. Maybe if you're lucky, I'll leave some water for you."

Maybe if I'm lucky, you'll drown yourself in it.

He slammed the door shut behind him, and any guilt I might have felt about leaving him behind disappeared. Maybe it was cruel of me, maybe I would spend the rest of my life feeling guilty about abandoning him without so much as a warning, but there was no way I could tell him what I was about to do without alerting Kiyama and Rosly. I didn't trust him enough to believe he wouldn't shout for them, or try to hold me there.

I wasted no time in stepping out of what had been Rosly's—Himegami's—scrubs, leaving them in a heap on the floor. The uniform I was wearing under them was a dead giveaway to what I was, but the scrubs were too baggy to run in. I needed to get away fast.

Kakine must have turned the faucet up all the way, because I could hear the water sputtering as I stepped around some of the broken glass from the store's big windows.

I came around a shelf just in time to see Keitz break away from kissing Kiyama. He patted around his jacket pockets, and out came a cell phone. Whoever it was, he wasn't all that happy to be talking to them. After a minute, he threw the phone at Kiyama and moved to the driver's side of the car. She turned her back to me, spreading out what looked to be a map over the hood of the SUV. When Keitz appeared again, he had a long black object tucked under one arm, and he was holding another by its barrel. Kiyama took the rifle from him without so much as even glancing at it, and pulled its strap over her shoulder. Like it belonged there.

I recognized them—of course I did. Every Anti-Skn officer that walked the perimeter of the electric fence carried an M16 rifle, and I was sure every camp controller that watched us from high up on the Tower had one within reach, too. Is that what they're going to use on us? I wondered. Or are they expecting me to use one, too?

The rational part of my brain finally kicked in, stomping down the chaos of panic and terror that had overtaken me. Maybe there was a reason Keitz had killed those kids. Maybe they had tried to hurt him even though they were tied up, or maybe—maybe they had just refused to join up with the Judgment.

The realization rose inside my chest like fire, burning everything in its path. Just the thought, the image, of having to touch one of those guns, of being expected to fire one of them… Is that what it would take to be a part of their family?

Or would I have to be like Kakine and become the weapon myself?

My dad had served as a cop for over seven years before he had to shoot someone. He never told me the whole story. I had to hear it secondhand from the kids in my class, who had read about it in the paper. A hostage situation, I guess.

It wrecked him. Dad wouldn't come out of my parents' bedroom until Grams drove out from Tsu to pick me up. When I came back home a few weeks later, he acted like nothing had happened at all.

I don't know what would force me to pick up a weapon like that, but it wasn't a group of strangers.

I had to get out. Get away. To where didn't matter in that moment. I was a lot of things, terrible things, but I didn't want to add murderer to that list.

There was a sound like crunching glass, just loud enough to hear over the bathroom's running water and the buzz of the drink coolers. The water shut off, and it was only then that I heard the rustling again. I whirled around, just in time to see the door with the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign swing open and shut behind the low food shelves.

A way out.

I glanced back out the window one last time, making sure Kiyama and Keitz still had their backs to me, before bolting past the display of beef jerky and heading straight for that door.

It's just a raccoon, I thought. Or rats. Not for the first time in my short life, rats were a preferable option to humans.

But the crinkling came again, louder, and when I pushed the door open, I wasn't staring at a group of rats ravaging a bag of snack food.

It was another kid.


	9. Chapter 8

EIGHT

HE—NO, SHE—OPENED HER MOUTH, her lips parting in a silent gasp. At first blink I hadn't been able to tell, but she was definitely a girl, and a little one at that. nine, maybe ten at most, judging by her size. Just a baby, drowning in an oversized Indy 500 shirt, complete with checkered flags and a bright green race car. Even weirder, her hands and arms up to her elbows were covered by bright yellow rubber gloves—the kind my mom used to wear when she scrubbed the bathroom or did the dishes.

The girl's white hair was shaved down into a buzz cut, and she was wearing baggy boys' jeans, but her face was so pretty she might have been a doll. Her full, heart-shaped lips formed a perfect O of shock, and her skin paled in such a drastic way that the freckles on her nose and cheeks stood out.

"Where did you come from?" I managed to choke out.

The stunned look on her face flashed to one of terror. The hand she didn't have jammed down into a container of Twizzlers slammed the door shut with a streak of yellow.

"Hey!" I pushed it back open in time to see her dash out the door at the other end of the stockroom, heading out into the rain. I was right behind her, throwing the backpack over my shoulders as I ran past the shelves. The door had caught on a large rock and went flying open as I kicked it and sprinted through.

"Hey!"

Snack-sized bags of pretzels and chips were spilling out from her pockets and beneath her shirt.

She had every right to be terrified of the half-crazed girl chasing after her. I could waste time feeling bad about it later; but, for now, my mind had gotten a whiff of hope, and it wasn't about to let it escape through a parking lot. She had to have come from somewhere, and if she had a way out of this town, or a place to hide until Kiyama and the others gave up on me, I wanted to know about it.

The gas station's back lot was only four parking spaces wide, and one of them was taken up by an overturned Dumpster. I heard animals tittering inside it as I sprinted after her, keeping my eyes on the back of her gray T-shirt. Her legs were pumping so fast beneath her that she tripped where the lot's loose asphalt met a patch of wild grass. My arms flew out to catch her, but the girl recovered just in time.

I was within two steps of being able to grab the back of her shirt when she suddenly picked up her speed, zipping through the small cluster of trees that separated the station from what looked like another road.

"I just—just want to talk to you!" I called. "Please!"

What I should have said was, I won't hurt you, or I'm not a Anti-Skin, or something that would have clued her in to the fact that I was just as screwed in the safety department as she was. But my chest was on fire, and my lungs constricted, stretched tight and useless by the pain in my ribs. The panic button was jumping up into the air, bouncing against my chin and shoulders. I ripped it off so hard, the chain's clasp snapped.

The little girl leaped over a fallen tree trunk, her sneakers squelching through the forest muck. Mine weren't much quieter, but Kakine's voice drowned us both out.

"Mikoto!"

My blood ran so cold, it seemed to cease pumping through me altogether. I should never have turned back to look over my shoulder, but I did, more out of instinct than fear. I didn't realize that my feet had stopped moving until Kakine shape appeared on the other side of the trees. He was close enough for me to see the red flush that had overtaken his face, but he hadn't seen me. Not yet.

"Mikoto!"

I had expected to find nothing but trees and air waiting for me as I picked up my run, but there she was, a short distance away. The girl had tucked herself behind a tree, not hiding, but also not beckoning me forward. Her mouth was pulled into a tight line, green eyes darting back and forth between me and the direction of Kakine's voice. When I started toward her, she took off so fast that both feet jumped up from the ground. Scared off like a little rabbit.

"Come on," I gasped, pumping my arms at my side. "I just want to—"

We broke through the trees, pouring out onto a deserted stretch of road. On the other side of the dead-end street was a line of little ramshackle houses, their windows boarded up like black eyes. I thought for sure that she was heading toward the closest one—the house with the gray fence and green door—but she made a hard right and ran for the minivan parked on the side of the road.

The car was dented beyond repair, not just on the bumpers, but on the side doors and the roof. And that was to say nothing of the shot-out and cracked lights, and the black paint that was flaking off in clumps. The nicest thing about it was the cursive, swirling logo that someone had painted along the sliding door: BETTY JEAN CLEANING.

But it was a car. A way out. I wasn't thinking about the logistics at that point—about whether it had gas, or if its engine would even start. I think my heart grew a pair of big, fluffy white wings at the mere sight of it, and nothing was going to shoot it down.

The girl was running so hard, she slammed into the side paneling of the minivan and bounced off it. She landed hard on the ground but recovered faster than I ever would have. With both yellow-gloved hands on the door handle, she ripped the sliding door back with a sound loud enough to shake the birds from the nearby roofs.

I got there just in time for her to close the door and slam her hand down on the lock.

I could see my reflection in the tinted glass—see how she must have seen me. Eyes that were wide and wild, a tangled mass of brown hair, clothes that would have otherwise been too small if camp hadn't made me so damn skinny I could see bones in my chest I didn't know existed. I ran around to the other side of the car, putting the minivan between me and anyone who'd come charging out of the trees.

"Please!" My voice was hoarse. Kakine's bellowing voice was either echoing around in my mind, or it was actually getting closer. The windows' tint was light enough that I could look through them and skim the trees for any flash of his waxy skin. If he was getting closer, then Kiyama and Keitz wouldn't be far behind. They must have heard him yelling by now.

Two choices, Mikoto, I thought. Go back or run.

My head and heart were in agreement on run, but the rest of my body—the parts that had been tormented by Capacity down, poisoned, and mistreated by people who claimed they only had the best intentions—stubbornly held its ground. I sagged against the minivan, deflated. It was like someone had crushed my chest in a vise, spinning the handle until every ounce of air and courage had been squeezed out of me.

Years at Tokiwadai had taught me to stop believing I could ever get away from the life people were so eager to set for me. I don't know why I thought it would be any different on the outside.

I heard footsteps crashing through the trees and undergrowth, louder with each second. When I looked up again, Kiyama's startlingly hair was weaving in and out of the trees, glowing under the drizzly clouds like a firefly.

"Mikoto!" I heard her call. "Mikoto, where are you?"

And then there was Keitz, walking right behind her with the gun in his hands. I looked right to the houses on the street's dead end. Farther down the opposite end of the street, I saw signs with symbols I didn't recognize—but that, the unknown, that had to be better than going back to Kiyama.

The little girl inside of the car looked at me, then turned to look at the trees. Her lips pressed together, pulling down into a frown. One hand was clenched on the door handle, the other on her seat's armrest. She started to stand once, only to sit back down and look one more time in my direction.

I swiped at my face with the back of my hand and took a step back. Hopefully the girl knew well enough to hide herself when Kiyama and Keitz ran after me. I'd lead them as far away as I could—it was the least I could do after scaring a few years off her life.

I hadn't even fully turned to go when I heard the door roll open behind me. A pair of hands reached out and seized the back of my uniform shirt, twisting the fabric for a better grip. When she yanked, I fell back, hitting the closest seat. My neck snapped against the armrest and I rolled onto the rough carpet behind the front passenger seat. The door roared shut behind me.

I blinked, trying to clear the dark spots swimming in my vision, but the other girl wasn't about to wait for me to get settled. She climbed over my tangled legs to get to the rear seat, grabbing my shirt collar and giving it a hard tug.

"Okay, okay," I said, crawling toward her. My fingers slid against the minivan's gray carpets. With the exception of a few stacked newspapers and tied-off plastic grocery bags tucked under the rear seat, the inside of the minivan was pretty well kept.

She motioned for me to crouch down behind one of the middle seats. As I pressed my knees against my chest, I realized that despite the fact that I had followed her order to the letter, she still hadn't spoken a single word to me.

"What's your name?" I asked. She draped herself over the top of the rear seat, her feet kicking at the air as she dug around for something in the back. If she heard me, she pretended not to.

"It's all right; you can talk to me.…"

Her face was flushed when she reemerged, a paint-splattered white sheet in hand. She pressed a finger to her lips and I wisely shut my mouth. The girl shook out the folded fabric and threw it over my head. The smell of fake lemon cleaner and bleach assaulted my nostrils as the sheet settled around me. I opened my mouth to protest, reaching up to yank it away from my face, but something stopped me.

Someone was coming—no, more than one person. I caught snippets of their back-and-forth, heard their feet slap against the pavement. The sound of a door opening stopped my heart dead in my chest.

"—I swear to God it was her, Kami-yaan!" The voice was deep, but it didn't sound like an adult. "And, look, I told you she'd beat us back. Index, did you run into trouble?"

The other car door opened. Someone else—Touma?—let out a relieved sigh.

"Thank God," he said, with a hint of a Southern drawl. "Come on, come on, come on, get in. I don't know what's going on, but I don't want to stay long enough to find out. The skip tracers were bad enough—"

"Why won't you admit that it was her?" the other voice snapped.

"—because we ditched her in Urayasu road, that's why—"

Above the sound of Touma's voice and the blood pounding between my ears, I heard another voice.

"Mikoto! Mikoto!"

Kiyama.

I pressed both hands against my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut.

"What in the world?" the first voice said. "Is that what I think it is?"

The first gunshot popped like a firecracker. It might have been the distance, or the army of trees and undergrowth muffling it, but it seemed harmless. A warning. The next one had much sharper teeth.

"Stop!" I heard Kiyama scream. "Don't shoot—!"

"Touma!"

"I know, I know!" The engine sputtered to life, and the squeal of the tires wasn't far behind. "Index, seat belt!"

I tried to brace myself, but the car tossed me back and forth between the seats. At one point, my head cracked back against the plastic side paneling and drink holder, but no one was paying attention to the strange noises in the backseat when someone was firing a gun.

I wondered if Keitz had given the other rifle to Kakine.

"Index, did something happen in the gas station?" the voice identified as Touma pressed. There was an edge of urgency to his words, but not panic. We had been driving for over ten minutes and were well away from the guns. His other companion, however, was a completely different story.

"Oh my God, more skip tracers? What, were they having a freaking convention? You realize what would have happened if we'd been caught, don't you?" he railed. "And they were shooting at us! Shooting! With a gun!"

Somewhere to the right of me, the little girl giggled.

"Well, I'm glad you find it funny!" the other one said. "Do you know what happens when you get shot, Index? The bullet rips through—"

"Springs!" The other boy's voice was sharp enough to cut off whatever gory tale he was about to share. "Settle down, okay? We're fine. That was a little bit closer than I would have liked, but still. We'll just have to try to make better mistakes tomorrow, right, Index?"

The first voice let out a strangled groan.

"I'm sorry about before," Touma said. His voice was gentle, which was enough for me to put together he was talking to the girl, not the guy who had moved on to moaning in dismay. "Next time I'll go with you to get food. You're not hurt, right?"

The vibrations from the road dulled their voices. A loose penny was clattering around so loudly in the drink holder that I almost reached up from under the sheet to grab it. When the first boy spoke again, I had to strain my ears to hear him. "Did it sound like they were looking for someone to you?"

"No, it sounded like they were shooting at us!"

Feeling left my hands, draining from the tips of my fingers.

You're safe, I told myself. They're kids, too.

Kids who had unwittingly put themselves in the line of fire for me.

I should have known this would happen. This, not my fear of setting off alone into a deserted town, should have been my first concern. But I had panicked, and it was like my brain had melted into a simmering pool of terror.

"—a number of things," Touma was saying, "but let's try to focus on finding The Croce di Pietro—"

I needed to get out now. Right now. This had been a terrible idea, maybe even my worst. If I left now, they still had a chance of escaping Kiyama and Keitz. I would still have a chance of escaping them, too.

I looped the straps of the backpack over my shoulders again and kicked the sheet off. Taking in a deep drag of the musty, cool air-conditioning, I used the rear seat to prop myself up.

Two teenage boys were in the front seat, facing the road. It was raining harder now; the fat drops were falling too fast for the windshield wipers to keep up with them, making it look as though we were headed straight into an Impressionist's vision of West Hakone. Silver skies were above and a black road was below—and somewhere in between, the luminescent glow of the trees with their new spring coats.

Touma, our driver, was wearing a beat-up leather jacket, darker across the shoulders where the rain had soaked through. His hair was a light, ashy dark that stood on end when more he ran a hand through it. Every now and then he would glance to the blond teen in the passenger seat, but it wasn't until he cast a quick look into the rearview mirror that I saw his eyes were blue.

"I can't see out of the back window when you—" His words choked off as he did a double take.

The minivan lurched to the right as he spun around in his seat and turned the wheel with him. The other kid let out a strangled noise as the car jerked to the right, toward the side of the road. The girl glanced back over her shoulder at me, her expression somewhere between surprise and exasperation.

Touma slammed on the brakes. Both of the car's other passengers gasped as their seat belts locked over their chests, but I had nothing holding me back from flying between the two middle seats. After what felt like a short eternity, but was likely only a hot second, the tires let off a long squeal of pain before the minivan quivered to a dead stop.

Both boys were staring back at me, wearing two completely different expressions. Touma's tanned face had gone porcelain pale, his mouth hanging open in an almost comical way. The other boy only glared at me through his thin, dark glasses, his lips pursed in disapproval, the same way my mom's used to when she found out I had stayed up past my bedtime. His ears, which were a touch too big for his head, stuck out from his skull; everything between them, from his forehead down past the thin bridge of his nose to his full lips, seemed to darken in anger. For a split second I was afraid that he was a Red, because judging by the look in his eyes, he wanted nothing more than to burn me to a crisp.

Boys. Why did it have to be boys?

I peeled myself up off the carpets and bolted toward the side door. My fingers squeezed the door handle, but no matter how hard I pulled it, it didn't budge.

"Index!" Touma cried, looking back and forth between us. She merely folded her hands in her lap, rubber gloves squeaking, and blinked at him innocently. Like she had no idea how they had come across the stowaway currently sprawled out by her feet.

"We all agreed—no strays." The other boy shook his head. "That's why we didn't take the kittens!"

"Oh, for the love of…" Touma slumped down in his seat, pressing his face into his hands. "What were we going to do with a box of abandoned kittens?"

"Maybe if that black heart of yours hadn't been willing to leave them to starve, we could have found them new, loving homes."

Touma gave the other boy a look of pure amazement. "You're never going to get over those cats, are you?"

"They were innocent, defenseless kittens and you left them outside someone's mailbox! A mailbox!"

"Springs," Liam groaned. "Come on."

. I don't know what amazed me more, the fact that they were arguing about kittens, or that they'd managed to forget that I was in the car.

"Excuse me!" I interrupted, slamming my palm against the window. "Can you please unlock the door?"

That shut them up at least.

When Touma finally turned back toward me, his expression was entirely different than before. He looked serious, but not altogether unhappy or suspicious. Which is a lot more than I could have said for myself if our situations had been reversed.

"Are you the one they were looking for?" he asked. "Mikari?"

"Mikoto," Springs corrected.

Touma waved his hand. "Right. Mikoto."

"Just unlock the door, please!" I yanked at the handle again. "I made a mistake. This was a mistake! I was selfish, I know that, so you have to let me go before they catch up."

"Before who catches up? Skip tracers?" Touma asked. His eyes darted over me, from my haggard face down my forest green uniform to my mud-stained shoes. To the Esper number that had been written on their canvas toes in permanent marker. A look of horror flickered over his face. "Did you just come from a camp?"

I felt Index—green eyes on me, but I held Touma's gaze and nodded. "The Julgament's League broke me out."

"And you ran away from them?" Touma pressed. He looked back at Index for confirmation. She nodded.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Springs interrupted. "You heard her—unlock the stupid door! We already have Anti-Skins and skip tracers after us; we don't need to add the League to the list! They probably think we took her, and if they put in the call that there are freaks roaming around in a beat-up black minivan…" He couldn't bring himself to finish.

"Hey," Touma said, holding up a finger, "don't talk about Black Betty that way."

"Oh, excuse me for hurting the feelings of a twenty-year-old minivan."

"He's right," I said. "I'm sorry, please—I don't want any more trouble for you."

"You want to go back to them?" Touma was facing me again, his mouth set in a grim line. "Listen, it's none of my business, Green, but you have the right to know that whatever lies they fed you probably aren't true. They aren't our angel network. They have their own agenda, and if they plucked you out of camp, it means they have a plan for you."

I shook my head. "You think I don't know that?"

"Okay," he returned in a calm voice. "Then why are you in such a hurry to get back?"

There was nothing judgmental or accusatory about the question, so why did I still feel like an idiot? Something hot and itchy bubbled up in my throat, drifting up until it settled behind my eyes. Oh God, the kid was looking at me with all the sympathy and pity required of someone watching a stray puppy being put down. I didn't know if the emotion swelling inside me was anger or embarrassment, but I didn't have time to sort it out.

"No, but I can't—I didn't mean to drag you into—I mean, I did mean to, but…"

I saw Index move out of the corner of my eye, reaching for me. I jerked away, sucking in a harsh breath. A hurt expression crossed her face, staying long enough for me to feel guilty about it. She had been trying to help me—to be kind to me. She didn't know what kind of monster she had saved.

If she had, she would never have unlocked the door.

"Do you want to go back to them?"

Springs was looking at Touma, and Touma was looking at me. He had caught me again with his eyes, and I hadn't even realized it.

"No," I said, and it was the truth. "I don't."

He didn't say anything, only shifted the minivan out of park. The van rolled forward.

What are you doing, Mikoto? I willed my hand to reach for the door, but it seemed too far and my hand too heavy. Get out. Get out now.

"Touma, don't you dare," Springs began. "If the League comes after us…"

"It'll be okay," Touma said. "We're just taking her to the nearest bus station."

I blinked. That was more than even I was expecting. "You don't have to."

Touma waved me off. "It's fine. Sorry we can't do more. Can't risk it."

"Yes, you're right," Springs said. "So explain to me why we aren't taking her to one of the train stations, which are closer?"

When I looked back up, Touma was studying me, his light pulled tight together by some unspoken thought. I tried not to squirm under his gaze. "Remind me again—Mikoto, right? I'm sure you've caught on by now, but I'm Touma, the lovely lady behind me is Index."

She smiled shyly. I turned and raised a brow in the direction of the other boy. "I'm guessing your name isn't actually Springs?"

"No," he sniffed. "Touma gave me that name at camp."

"He was a bit of a colored shirts ." Touma had a small smile on his face." Index can back me up on this one."

But Index wasn't paying attention, not to any of us. She had pulled her hoodie up over her ears and twisted around in her seat so that she was staring over the top of it, out the back window. Her lips were parted, but she couldn't bring the words to them. The color drained from her round face.

"Index?" Touma said. "What's wrong?"

She didn't need to point. Even if we hadn't seen the tan SUV speeding straight for us, it would have been impossible to miss the bullet that blew through the back window and shattered it.


	10. Chapter 9

NINE

THE SINGLE BULLET CUT A PATH straight down the center of the minivan, exiting out through the windshield. For a moment, none of us did anything but stare at the hole and the spreading spiderweb of cracks radiating out from it.

"Holy sh—!" Touma threw the car into forward, slamming his foot down all the way on the gas. He seemed to have forgotten that we were in a Dodge Caravan and not a BMW, because it went from zero to sixty in what felt like thirty minutes. Black Betty's body began to shake, rattling from more than just the holes and cracks in the road.

I whirled around, searching for Keitz's SUV, but the car behind us was a bright red pickup truck, and the man leaning out of the passenger window of the truck, rifle in hand, was not Keitz.

"I told you!" Springs yelled. "I told you they were skip tracers!"

"Yes, you were right," Touma yelled right back. "But could you try to be useful, too?"

He jerked the car left, just as the man fired off another shot. It must have gone wide, because it never hit the car, not that I could tell. He fired again, and that bullet had far better luck; it slammed into Black Betty's bumper. We felt the hit like a brick to the back; every single one of us let out a sharp gasp. In Springs's case, he moaned and crossed himself.

Index was slouched down in her seat, her chest pressed against her knees. Her hood hid her face, but it couldn't mask the way her entire body shook. I put a hand on her back, holding her down.

Another bang sounded behind us, but this time, it wasn't a gunshot.

"What in the…" Touma risked a look back over his shoulder. "Are you kidding me?"

My heart fell like a stone into my stomach. The red truck jolted forward, and I saw the driver—a light orange brown haired woman with glasses—tug the wheel to the side, trying to shake the truck free from the tan SUV that had rammed into it. I didn't need to see who was driving it to know who that vehicle belonged to: Kiyama and Keitz. But, then, who was in the pickup truck?

"It is her!" Springs cried. "I told you! She found us!"

"Then who's the guy with the gun?" Touma cried. "Her boyfriend?"

The man who had fired at us turned his attention to taking out the SUV behind him, twisting around in the window. He lasted half a breath. A gunshot from the SUV clipped him in the chest and sent an explosive spray of blood into the air. The crack of the next bullet sent the shooter's lifeless body sliding out of the passenger window of the truck. The driver—the woman—didn't so much as look back at him.

I watched the red truck finally break away from the SUV's front bumper. With both of its back tires blown out, it swerved into the other lane, spinning out, until it came to a jolting stop on the shoulder of the highway.

"That's one," I heard Touma say. I turned back, fully expecting to see Keitz's gun trained on me through the blown-out back windshield of our van. Only, Keitz was behind the wheel.

Kiyama was the one in the passenger seat, a rifle steady between her hands.

"Please, just let me go," I said, grabbing Touma's shoulder. "I'll go back with them. No one has to get hurt."

"Yes!" Springs said. "Pull over, let her out!"

"Both of you shut up!" Touma said, throwing Black Betty into the right lane and then back into the left. The SUV followed us, more than keeping up. I couldn't tell if we had slowed down, or if they had somehow gunned it harder, because in the next breath, the SUV rammed into us, and not even the seat belts could keep us from jerking forward.

Touma muttered something under his breath, which was lost in the sudden onslaught of heavy rain. He rolled down his window and threw a hand outside, as if to motion for the SUV to go around us.

"Do something!" Springs shouted, bracing his hands against the steering wheel.

"I'm trying!" he said. "I can't concentrate!"

He's trying to use his abilities. The realization crept up through my terror.

The fat droplets splattering the window blurred the trees around us, but Touma didn't bother with the wipers. If he had, he might have seen the other car blazing toward us from the opposite direction. Its horn screeched to life and woke Touma from his trance.

The minivan swerved back into the right lane, narrowly missing a head-on collision with the sedan. If that little car hadn't slammed on its brakes, the SUV would have plowed right into it, too. Both Index and I whirled around just in time to see the SUV swerve back into the right lane. Keitz managed to recover quickly, and they were speeding toward us again before we had a chance to catch our breaths.

"Touma," I begged. "Please, just pull over. I won't let them do anything to you!"

I don't want to go back.

I don't want to go back.

I don't want to…

I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Green!' Touma's voice cut into my thoughts. "Can you drive?"

"No—"

"Can you see better than Springs?"

"Maybe, but—"

"Great!" he said, reaching back for my arm. "Come on up to the captain's seat."

He snorted, even as another bullet pinged against Black Betty's metal skin. "Come on, it's just like riding a bike. Right pedal is gas to go, left is brake, steer with wheel. That's all you need to know."

"Wait!" But apparently, I didn't get a say in the matter. He swerved back into the left lane just as the SUV came up for another tap. Instead of speeding up, his foot came down hard on the brake. Black Betty skidded to a halt, and the SUV blew right by us.

It happened too fast for me to put up any kind of fight. He unsnapped his seat belt and pulled me toward the driver's seat just as he stood from it. The car rolled forward on its own accord and I panicked, slamming my foot down on what I thought was the brake pedal. Black Betty leaped forward, and this time I was the one that screamed.

"Brake is on the left!" Touma flew against the dashboard as the SUV recovered. I heard its tires scream as Keitz turned the truck around and kicked up the speed. "Hit the gas!"

"Why can't he drive?" I asked in a strangled voice.

Springs pushed the passenger's seat back far enough for him to climb over it into the back, and Touma took Springs's seat.

"Because," he said, rolling down the window, "he can barely see five feet in front of him. Trust me, you don't want him to drive, darlin'. Now—hit the gas!"

I did as I was told. The car sprung forward again, sending my heart up into my throat. The wheels spun against the wet asphalt.

Touma was half hanging out of the window, half sitting on it. "Faster!" he said.

The rain fell thick and heavy, but the SUV's headlights pierced the mist as I drove the van straight toward them. We were going so fast that the steering wheel shook in my hands, jerking around like it had a life of its own. I bit back a frustrated scream and tried to let up on the gas, but Touma wasn't having it.

"No, keep going!"

"Kami-yan," Springs was hunched over in his seat. "This is insane—what are you doing?"

He had been so quiet that I'd almost forgotten he was in the van. With the speedometer creeping past eighty, ninety, ninety-five, I wasn't remembering much at all.

And that's when it went to hell.

There was a horrible bang—a thousand times worse than the sound of a balloon exploding—and the van was spinning, the wheel dancing right out of my hands.

"Straight!" Touma was shouting, "Straighten out!"

"Sh—!" The wind was knocked out of my chest by my seat belt, but I fought against the natural turn of the wheel long enough to get us heading straight again. The car tilted back, leaving a trail of sparks on the road behind us. We were staring the SUV down again, making a second head-on pass at them.

"Keep going toward them—don't stop!" Touma yelled.

But the tire, I thought, my hands strangling the steering wheel, the tire…

Springs had reached for Touma's legs, steadying him before he could go flying out the window. "Let go!" he snapped. "I'm fine, I've got it now!"

I didn't know what Touma had meant by "it," not until I looked up into the rearview mirror and saw the dark body of a tree come hurtling out of the woods, guided in front of the SUV, by nothing other than a flick of Touma's right hand.

With his attention focused on the minivan barreling toward them, Keitz didn't have time to jerk the car out of the tree's path. I spun my hands around the wheel blindly, until we were facing away from the wreckage. I heard the sound of shattering glass and crunching metal as Keitz tried to veer, only to overcorrect. When I looked back in the side mirror, the SUV was on its side in a smoking heap. Beside it was the splintered body of a tree, still rolling to a stop after the collision.

"What did you do?" I had to yell over the chatter of the wind and road. "I thought—"

Springs was the one to answer, his face ashen. "Now do you get it? They weren't going to stop."

Touma slid back inside of the window, plopping down with a long sigh. His hair was standing up on all ends, dusted with leaves and little twigs.

"Okay, green," he said, keeping his voice steady, "they blew the back tire out, so you're driving on the rim. Just keep heading straight and start to slow down. Get off on the next ramp."

I clenched my jaw so hard that it ached.

"You all right, Index?" he asked. The girl gave him two thumbs-up, her yellow gloves the only bright spot of color in the van.

"Well, I'm fine, thanks for asking," Springs said. His little glasses were crooked on his face as he smoothed his blue button-down shirt. For good measure, he leaned forward and smacked the back of Touma's head. "And by the way, are you out of your freaking mind? Do you know what happens when a body is thrown from a car at high velocity?"

"No," Touma interrupted, "but I imagine it's not pretty or appropriate for an eleven-year-old's ears."

I glanced back at Index. Eleven? That couldn't be right.…

"Oh, so you can throw her in the path of bullets, but she can't hear a scary story?" Springs crossed his arms over his chest.

Touma reached down and pulled his seat back upright. When he sat back, it was with a grimace and clenched fists. There was a fresh cut above his eye. Blood dripped from his chin.

I saw the green highway sign through the haze of rain. It didn't matter what town or exit number it said. I just wanted to get off the road and out of the driver's seat.

My entire body was numb, exhausted, as I took my foot off the gas. The minivan followed the curve of the ramp with only the slightest nudging, and by the time we reached the road, it came to a natural stop. I pressed a hand to my chest to make sure my heart hadn't given out on me and prevent sparks flew from my forehead.

Touma reached over and put the parking brake on.

"You did a good job, biri-biri" he began. His voice was quieter than I expected. Unfortunately, it did nothing to calm the pissed off snake that was coiled tight around my stomach or prevent the sparks to light the car.

I reached over and punched him in the arm. Hard.

"Ow!" he cried, pulling away from me with wide eyes. "What was that for?"

"That was not like riding a bike, you idiot!"

He stared at me a moment, his lips twitching. It was Index who burst out into a fit of silent laughter, an endless stream of gasping and shaking that turned her face bright pink and left her breathless. Seconds passed with her laughter as the only sound able to float up above the rain—at least until Springs put his face in his hands and let out a long groan.

"Oh yeah," Touma said, popping his door open, "you're gonna fit in real nice."

The rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time Touma got to work on the back tire. I had stayed exactly where I was in the driver's seat, mostly because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. The other two kids had jumped out of the car after him, Index heading to the back of the van with Touma, and Springs in the exact opposite direction. I watched through the cracked windshield as he made his way toward a sign pointing us in the direction of the National Forest. After a minute, he pulled something—a paperback book—out of his back pocket, and sat down at the edge of the road. Feeling more than a little envy, I squinted, trying to make out the book's title, but half of the cover was missing, and the other half covered by his hand. I don't know if he was actually reading or just glaring at the text.

I stood up from the driver's seat and made my way to the back of the minivan. My hands were still trembling, as if trying to shake out that last bit of adrenaline singing in my blood. The black backpack that Keitz and Kiyama had given me had been thrown into the backseat, covered in a few loose sheets of newspaper and an empty bottle of Windex.

I brushed the backpack off and set it down next to me on the seat. The newspaper was over three years old and stiff with age. There was a half-page ad for a new face cream someone had oh-so-cleverly called Forever Young.

I flipped the sheet over, looking for any actual news. I skimmed over an opinion piece that celebrated the rehabilitation camps and was more amused than offended that Esper kids were now being openly referred to as "mutant time bombs." There was also a short article on rioting that the reporter claimed was "the direct result of escalating tensions between the West and East government on new birth legislation." At the very bottom of the page, past some fluff story about the anniversary of some train conductors' strike, was a picture of Accelerator Crowley.

"President's Son Attends Julgament's League Hearing," is what the headline beneath it said. I didn't need to read more than the first two or three lines to get the basic gist: the president was too big of a coward to come out of hiding after a failed assassination attempt, so he sent his freak baby to do the dirty work for him. How old was Accelerator now? I wondered. The pictures at Tokiwadai were identical to this one, and I had never thought of him as anything older than eleven or twelve. But he must have been eighteen or close to by now. Practically an old geezer by our standards.

I tossed the paper aside in disgust and reached for my backpack again. Keitz had said there was a change of clothes inside, and if that was the case, I was getting out of my Tokiwadai uniform once and for all.

A plain white shirt, a pair of jeans, a belt, and a zip-up hoodie. I could handle that.

The knock on the window startled me enough that I nearly bit my tongue clean off. Touma's face appeared there, drawn in tense lines. "Can you bring those clothes to me for a sec? I need to show you something."

The very second I knew his eyes were on me, every bone, muscle, and joint in my body snapped to attention. With the faint taste of blood in my mouth, I jumped out of the sliding door, taking in the sight of the van. If it were possible, the car looked worse than before—like a toy that someone had wedged down the sink and run through the garbage disposal. My fingers came up to trace one of the fresh punctures on the side paneling where a bullet had slammed through the thin metal.

Touma knelt beside Index, who was holding on to the spare tire with everything she had, and went to work cranking the van up on the jack and off the demolished back right tire. I came to stand behind them just in time to watch Touma hit the key on his face after running too hard and mutter fukoda muffled breathing with his hand on his face trying to stop the bleeding

"Okay," he began. He blew a strand of his dark hair out of his eyes. "Take out the shirt you were about to change into."

"I'm—I'm not changing out here," I denied completely red.

He rolled his eyes. "Really? You're worried about your modesty when we're going to have League agents on our tail in a matter of hours? Priorities, Biri-biri. Take out the shirt."

I watched him for a moment, but even I wasn't sure what I was looking for.

"Feel around the collar," Touma said. He set another nut on the ground by his feet. "You'll find a bump."

I did. It was small, no bigger than a pea, sewn into the otherwise nondescript shirt.

"Springs has a little fancy lady kit under the front seat," he said. "If you're going to change into it, you need to cut the tracker out of that shirt."

The "little fancy lady kit" turned out to be a box of thread, scissors, and a tiny piece of embroidery. On a scrap of fabric, someone—Springs?—had sewn a perfect black square. I stared at the mark, rubbing my thumb over its raised surface.

"Anyway, you should probably change out of the uniform," Touma continued. "But be sure to check the pants and the sweater, too. I wouldn't put it past them to use more than one."

He was right again. I found one sewn into the waistband of the jeans, one in the hem of the hoodie, and even one glued inside the belt buckle—four trackers for one girl, plus one that had been sewn into the lining of the backpack itself.

Touma finished replacing the tire with the spare faster than I thought possible. Index helped him place the nuts back in their sockets and slowly crank the car back down. When he handed the tools to her, she knew exactly where to put them in the trunk.

"Here," he said, holding his hand out to me. "I'll take care of them." My hands trembled as I handed the trackers to him. He threw them on the ground, and crushed them beneath the heel of his shoe.

"I don't understand.…" I began. But I did, in a way. They wouldn't have gone to all that trouble breaking me out if they hadn't had a method of keeping tabs on me if I got recaptured or separated from them.

Touma's hand came out toward me, and the sheer panic at the thought of his touch had me jumping back, trying to put as much air between us as I could. It still wasn't far enough; his hand dropped between us, but I felt the warmth of his upturned palm brush my shoulder as if it had actually rested there. My arms came up and crossed over my chest, and some mangled mess of anxiety and guilt rose up from deep in my guts. I tried to focus on the Esper identification numbers on the top of my shoes to keep from jumping away again.

You are acting like a nervy five-year-old, I told myself. Stop it. He's just another kid.

"They tell you a lot of lies in the Julgament's League, the biggest being that you're free," he said. "They talk about love and respect and family, but I don't know any family that puts a tracking device on someone and then sends them out to be shot up and blown away."

"But we didn't have to kill them," I said. My fingers tightened around the backpack straps. "There was another kid inside. Kakine. He didn't…he didn't deserve to…"

"You mean—" Liam wiped the grease and dirt from his hands off on the front of his jeans. "The kind of—" He made a vague motion with his hands, which I think was supposed to indicate Kakine's stockade stature. "That guy?"

I nodded.

"The tree didn't actually hit them," Touma said, leaning against the minivan's sliding door. "They might still be alive."

Touma guided me back toward the passenger seat and whistled to get Springs's attention. Somewhere behind me, I heard Index climb back into Black Betty.

"Look," he continued, "they all wear the trackers. I'm sure another League agent will be along in a little while to help them. You can go back if you want, or we can take you to the bus station like I said we would."

My hands were still by my side, my face as blank as a clear sky, but I wasn't fooling him. He tuned in to my guilt like I had been wearing it plain as day on my face. "It doesn't make you a bad person, you know—to want to live your own life."

I looked back and forth between the road and his face, more confused now than ever. It didn't make sense for him to want to help me, not when he already had two other people counting on him. That he wanted to protect.

Touma opened the back door for me, tilting his head toward the empty seat inside. But before I could even consider the cost of staying with them, if just for a short while, Springs's arm shot out and he ripped the sliding door shut in front of my face and closing the Touma finger in the process.

"Springs—shit" Touma warned.

"Why," Springs began, "were you with the Julgament's League?"

"Hey now," Touma said. "This is a don't-ask-don't-tell operation. Biri-biri, you—"

"No," Springs said, "you decided that. You and Index. If we're going to be stuck with her, I want to know who this person is and why we got chased down by gun-toting lunatics trying to get her back."

Touma lifted his hands in surrender.

"I…" What could I tell them that wouldn't sound like a complete and total lie? My head felt light; I was almost too exhausted to think. "I was…"

Index gave me a nod of encouragement, her eyes bright.

"I was a runner in the Control Tower," I blurted. "I can use my powers to invade without access codes to the computer servers the League wants access to. I have a photographic memory, and I'm good with numbers and codes."

That was probably overkill, but apparently I had sold it.

"What about your friend? What's his deal?"

The longer they stared at me, the harder it became to not fidget. Get a grip, Mikoto.

"You mean Kakine?" I said, my voice sounding high to my own ears. "Yesterday was the first time I had ever seen him. I don't know what his story was. I didn't ask."

I wished I didn't know what Kakine's story was.

Springs slapped the side of the minivan. "Don't tell me you believe that, Kami-yan. We knew everyone by the time we broke out."

Broke out. They actually escaped? Shock left me speechless for several moments until I asked, finally, "Really? All three thousand of them?"

The boys took a step back at the same time.

"You had three thousand kids at your camp?" Touma asked.

"Why?" I looked between them, unnerved. "How many were in your camp?

"Three hundred at most," Touma said. "Are you sure? Three thousand?"

"Well, it's not like they gave us an official number. There were thirty kids per cabin and about a hundred of those. There used to be more, but they sent the level 4 and level 5 away."

Apparently, I had blown his mind. Touma let out a strangled noise at the back of his throat. "Holy crap," he finally managed to squeeze out. "What camp was it?"

"It's none of your business," I said. "I'm not asking you where you were."

"We were in Urayasu camp," Springs said, ignoring a sharp look from Touma. "They stuck us in an abandoned elementary school. We broke out. Your turn."

"Why, so you can report me to the nearest Anti-Skin station?"

"Yeah, because, clearly, we'd be able to stroll up and lodge a sighting report."

After a moment, I blew out a harsh breath. "Fine. I was in Tokiwadai."

The silence that followed seemed to stretch on longer than the road beneath us.

"Are you serious?" Touma asked, finally. "Crazy Tokiwadai, with the FrankenKiddies?"

"They've stopped testing," I said, feeling strangely defensive.

"No, I just—I just…" Touma raced through the words. "I thought it was all filled up, you know? That's why they bused us to Utuyasu camp."

"How old were you when you went into camp?" Springs's voice was measured, but I saw his face fall all the same. "You were young, right?"

The answer popped out before I could stop myself. "The day after my tenth birthday."

Touma blew out a low whistle, and I wondered exactly how much of Tokiwadai's reputation had leaked out in the time I had been there. Who were the ones talking about it—the former Anti-Skns assigned there?

And, if people knew, why hadn't anyone come to help us?

"How long were you guys in Urayasu camp?"

"Index was there for about two years. I was there for a year and a half, and Touma was there for a year or so."

"And you're what, sixteen? Seventeen?"

"I don't know," I said, and the thought nearly knocked me back against the van. I really wasn't sure—Kongou had claimed it was six years, but she could have been wrong. We didn't keep track of time at Tokiwadai in the usual way; I recognized seasons passing, but somewhere along the line I had stopped trying to mark it. I grew bigger, I knew every winter that I must be another year older, but none of it…it just hadn't seemed to matter until now. "What year is it?"

Springs snorted, rolling his eyes heavenward. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped once he got a good look at my face. I'm not sure what kind of expression I was wearing, but it erased his exasperation in two seconds flat. His narrowed eyes widened into something that looked very much like pity.

And Touma…his expression seemed to dissolve entirely.

I felt the hair on my neck begin to prickle, my fingers twist the fabric of my uniform shorts. The absolute last thing—the last thing—I wanted was to be pitied by a bunch of strangers. Regret washed down through me, flooding out even my anxiety and fear. I shouldn't have said anything at all; I should have lied or dodged the question. Whatever they thought Tokiwadai was like, whatever they believed I'd gone through, it was bad enough to mark me as pathetic in their eyes. I could see it in their faces, and the irony stung more than I expected it to. They'd taken in a monster, thinking it was a mouse.

"Sixteen, then," I said, once Touma had confirmed the year. Kongou had been right after all.

Something else was bothering me. "They're still creating new camps and sending kids to them?"

"Not so much anymore," Touma said. "The younger set—Index's age—they were hit the hardest. People got scared, and the birthrate dropped off even before the government tried banning new births. Most of the kids that are still being sent to camps are like us. They escaped detection during collections or tried to run."

I nodded, mulling this over.

"At Tokiwadai," Springs began, "did they really—"

"I think that's enough," Touma interrupted. He reached past Springs's outstretched arm and opened the sliding door for me again. "She answered your questions, we answered hers, and now we've gotta hit the road while the going is still good."

Index climbed in first, and, without looking at either boy, I followed, heading to the rear seat, where I could stretch out and hide from any more unwanted questions.

Springs took the front passenger seat, throwing one last look back at me. His full lips were pressed so tight together they were colorless. Eventually, he turned his attention to the book in his lap and pretended that I wasn't there at all.

Black Betty purred as Touma hit the accelerator and my entire body vibrated with her. She was the only one willing to speak for a long time.

The rain was still coming down, casting a gray light around the car. The windows had fogged, and for a minute I did nothing but watch the rain. Car headlights were flashing through the front windshield, but it was nowhere near dark.

Springs eventually turned the radio on, filling the quiet space with a report about gas crisis and the drilling that was happening in Alaska as a result. If I wasn't already halfway to sleep, the droning from the humorless newscaster would have put me there.

"Hey, Biri-biri," Touma called back. "You have a last name?"

I thought about lying, about making myself into someone that I wasn't, but it didn't seem right. Even if I let these people in, they'd forget about me soon enough.

"No," I said. I had a Esper number and the name I'd inherited from my grandmother. The rest didn't matter.

Touma turned back to the road, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. "Got it."

I dropped back down on the seat, pressing my hands against my face. Sleep came for me eventually, just as the storm clouds peeled back to reveal a pristine night sky. Without the sound of rain, I could just make out the quiet song floating from the car speakers, and Touma's deep voice as he sang along.


	11. Chapter 10

TEN

SPRINGS WAS THE ONE TO WAKE ME. It was a quick slap to my shoulder, like he couldn't bring himself to touch it long enough to put the effort into shaking me, but it was enough. I had been curled like a shrimp on one of the cramped seats, but at his touch, I bolted out of it, knocking my head against the window. I felt its cold touch on the back of my neck as I all but tumbled in the narrow space between the front seat and mine. For a single, foggy instant, I couldn't remember where I was, never mind how I had gotten there.

Springs's face crossed back into my line of sight, one eyebrow arched at my tangle of limbs. And then it all came back to me, like a punch to the throat.

Damn it, damn it, damn it, I thought, trying to smooth my hazel hair out of my face. I had only meant to rest my eyes for a few minutes—and who knows how long I'd been conked out? Judging by Springs's expression, it hadn't been a short nap.

"Don't you think you've slept long enough?" he huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. The van felt warmer, and I didn't realize why until I sat up and saw the dark blue fabric that had been strung up to cover the rear windshield.

The reality of the situation struck me at once, with a sharp twist in my side. I'd left myself wide open in a van of strangers—so wide open, in fact, that Springs had been able to put a hand on me. God, I didn't know which of us had come out luckier in the end—him, for not having his brain wiped fried, or me for avoiding yet another potential disaster. How stupid could I be? The second they knew what I was, they'd throw me out, and then where would I be? Speaking of which…

"Where are we?" I pulled myself back up into the seat. "Where are the others?"

Springs sat in one of the middle seats, dividing his time between the book in his lap and the world of trees just outside the tinted car window. I moved, trying to follow his gaze, but there was nothing to see.

"Somewhere near the lovely city of Nara, South Kyoto. Touma and Index are checking something out," he said.

I had leaned forward without realizing it, trying to see what he was reading. It'd been years since I'd even seen a book, let alone read from one. Springs wasn't having it, though. The moment my shoulder brushed his, he snapped the book shut and turned to give me the nastiest stink eye he could muster. Even with his too-small glasses and my knowledge of his little fancy lady kit under the front seat, I reminded myself there was a distinct possibility he was capable of killing me with his brain.

"How long did I sleep?"

"A day," Springs said. "The general wants you up and ready to report to duty. He's in one of his go-go-go moods. You may only be a Level 1, but he's expecting you to help."

I chose my next words carefully, ignoring the smug look on his face. Let him think that if it made him feel better. He was smarter; there was no debate about that. He probably had years of education on me, had read hundreds more books, and could remember enough math to actually be useful. But as small and stupid as he made me feel, there was no ignoring the fact that all it would take is one touch, and I could have read him the contents of his brain.

"Touma's a level 2, right?" I began. "Are you and Index both Blue, too?"

"No." He frowned, and it took him several moments to decide whether or not to reveal his next bit of information. "We are not sure of Touma's level , he can fight with his right hand and Index's Yellow like me."

I sat up a little straighter. "You had Yellows at your camp?"

Springs grunted. "No Green, I just lied to you—yes, we had Yellows."

But that didn't make sense—after all, if they took the Yellows out of Tokiwadai, why wouldn't they have taken them from all the camps?

"Did…" I began, unsure of how to ask this. When she first pulled me into the van, I thought she was just shy and skittish around strangers. But I hadn't heard her utter a single word in the entire time I had been with them. Not to me, not to Springs—not even to Touma. "Did they…do something to the Yellows? To her?"

The only way the van's atmosphere could have electrified faster was if I had thrown a live wire into a full bathtub.

Springs turned toward me sharply, drawing his arms up, crossing them in front of his chest. The look he leveled at me over his glasses would have turned a weaker soul to stone.

"That," he said slowly—precisely, I thought, to make sure I understood, "is absolutely none of your business."

I held up my hands, retreating.

"Were you even thinking about what could happen to her when you followed her?" he pressed on. "Do you even care that your friends in the green SUV would have gladly scooped her up?"

"The people in the green SUV—" I began, and would have finished, had the door not suddenly rolled open behind us. Springs let out a noise that could only be described as a squawk and just about flew into the front passenger seat. By the time he had settled himself down, his eyes were almost as wide as Index's, who stood watching him from the door.

"Don't do that!" he gasped, clutching his chest. "Give us a little warning, will you?"

Index raised an eyebrow in my direction, and I raised one right back at her. After a moment, she seemed to remember the reason she had come and began waving us outside, her bright, sunny-color glove flashing.

Springs unbuckled his seat belt with an aggravated sigh. "I told him this was a waste of time. They said West, not South." He turned his gaze back toward me. "By the way," he added, "that SUV was tan. That's some photographic memory you have."

An excuse leaped to my throat, but he cut me off with a knowing look, and slammed the door behind him.

I jumped out of the van and followed Index. As my feet sunk into the mud and sad, yellowed grass, I had my first good look around.

A large wooden sign, leaning back like someone had nearly run it over, said CAMPING GROUNDS, but there was no river, and it certainly wasn't your typical camping ground. If anything, it was—or once was—an old trailer and RV park.

The farther we walked from the minivan, the more nervous I felt. It wasn't raining, but my skin felt clammy and cold to the touch. All around us, as far as my eyes could see, were the burned-out silver and white husks of former homes and vehicles. Several of the larger, more permanent trailers had entire walls ripped or charred away, revealing kitchens and living rooms with their insides still intact, if not waterlogged and infested with animals and slowly rotting leaves from the nearby trees. It was like a mass grave of past lives.

Even though screen doors had been ripped off or warped, even though some RVs knelt on whatever tires had been slashed, there were still signs of life all around. Walls were decorated with pictures of happy and smiling families, a grandfather clock was still counting time, pots were still on stoves, a small swing set remained undisturbed and lonely on the far end of the grounds.

Index and I navigated around an RV that was now on its side, following a path of deep footsteps in the mud. I took one look at the RV's rusted bones and immediately turned away, my hand tightening around Index's gloves. She looked up at me with a questioning look, but I only shook my head and said, "Spooky."

When the rain came, it hammered against the metal bodies around us, rattling a few of the weaker roofs and screens. I jumped back with a yelp when a trailer's door fell into our path. Index only jumped over it and pointed ahead, to where Springs and Touma were locked in conversation.

It had taken me a second to recognize Touma. Under his jacket, he wore a blue sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over what looked like a Redskins hat. I had no idea where he managed to find them, but a pair of aviator sunglasses obscured a good portion of his face from view.

"—isn't it," Springs said. "I told you."

"They said it was at the east edge of Osaka," Touma insisted. "And they could have meant West—"

"Or they could have been screwing with us," Springs finished for him. He must have heard us approaching, because he jumped and turned around. The moment he locked eyes with me, he scowled.

"Mornin', sunshine!" Touma called. "Sleep okay?"

Index darted out ahead of me, but I could feel my feet begin to drag with an invisible weight as I came toward them. I crossed my arms over my chest, steadying myself enough to ask, "What is this place?"

This time, it was Touma who blew out a sigh. "Well, we were hoping it was The Croce di Pietro. The The Croce di Pietro, I mean."

"That's in Vatican," I said, looking down at my shoes. "It refers to the cross that has been set up on Peter's tomb and where the St. Peter's Basilica now currently stands."

"Thank you Detective Duh." Springs shook his head. "We're talking about the Slip Kid's The Croce di Pietro."

"Hey." Touma's voice was sharp. "Lay off, buddy. We really didn't know anything about it until we were out of camp, either."

Springs crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. "Whatever."

"What is it?"

I felt Touma turn his attention back to me, which immediately prompted me to turn my attention back to Index, who mostly just looked confused. Get a grip, I ordered myself, stop it.

I wasn't afraid of them, not even Springs. Maybe a bit when I thought too hard about how easily I could ruin their lives, or pictured their horrified reactions if they were to figure out what, exactly, I was. I just didn't know what to say or how to act around them. Every movement and word on my part felt uncomfortable, shrill, or sharp, and I was beginning to worry that the feelings of hesitancy and awkwardness were never going to lift. I already felt like the freak of freaks without the added realization that I lacked the basic ability of communicating normally with other human beings.

Touma sighed, scratching the back of his head. "We first heard about The Croce di Pietro from some kids in our camp. Supposedly—and I mean supposedly—it's a place where any kids on the outside can go and live together. The Slip Kid, who runs the show, can get you in touch with your folks without the Anti-Skins finding out about it. There's food, a place to sleep—well, you get the picture. The problem is finding it. We think it's somewhere in this area, thanks to a few fairly unhelpful Blues we ran across in Urayasu. It's the kind of thing that…"

"If you're in the know, you're not supposed to talk about it," I finished. "But who's the Slip Kid?"

Touma shrugged. "No one knows. Or…well, I guess people know, they just don't say. The rumors about him are pretty incredible, though. The Anti-Skins gave him that nickname because he—supposedly—escaped their custody a good four times."

I was too stunned to say anything to that.

"Kind of puts the rest of us to shame, huh? I was feeling really bad about myself until someone told me the rumors about him." Touma shuddered. "Supposedly he's one of those—an Level 5."

That single word thundered down around me, freezing me in place. Touma went on to say something else, with a lot less disgust, but I couldn't hear him over the roar in my ears. I didn't hear a word of what he was saying.

Slip Kid. Someone who could help kids get home, if they had a home to return to, and parents who remembered them and wanted them. A life to reclaim.

And, potentially, one of the last Level 5 kids out there.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing the heels of my palms against them for good measure. I didn't qualify for his help, not in the traditional way. Even if I could get in touch with my parents, it wasn't like they would welcome a girl they considered a stranger back with open arms. There was Grams, but I had no way of knowing where she was now. After finding out what I had done, would she even want me?

"Why do you even need this guy's help?" I interrupted, still feeling light-headed. "Can't you just go home?"

"Use your brain, Green," Springs said. "We can't go home, because Anti-Skins are probably watching our parents."

Touma shook his head, finally taking his sunglasses off. He looked exhausted, the skin under his eyes baggy and bruised. "You'll have to be really careful, okay? Do you even want me to drop you off at a bus station? Because we'd be happy—"

"No!" Springs said. "We most certainly would not. We've already wasted enough time on her, and she's the reason we have the League after us, too."

A sharp pain sprouted on the left side of my chest, just above my heart. He was right, of course. The best option for everyone would be to drop me off at the nearest bus station and be done with it.

But it didn't mean I didn't want to, or need to, find this Slip Kid as badly as they did. But I couldn't ask to stay. I couldn't impose on them anymore than I already had, or risk ruining them with the invisible fingers that seemed bent on tearing apart every single connection I managed to make. If the League caught up to us and took them in, I'd never forgive myself. Never.

If I was going to find the Slip Kid, I was going to have to do it by myself. You'd think I'd be used to the thought of taking on each day with no one beside me, that it'd be some kind of relief not to be in constant danger of sliding into someone else's head. But I didn't want to. I didn't want to step out under the gray overcast sky alone and feel its chill work its way under my skin.

"So," I said, squinting at the nearest trailer. "This isn't The Croce di Pietro."

"It might have been, once," Touma said. "They could move around from time to time. I hadn't really considered it."

"Or," Springs groused, "they could have already been taken back into Anti-Skins custody. Maybe this was The Croce di Pietro, and now there is no more The Croce di Pietro, and we're going to have to find a way to deliver Stiyl's letter and get home by ourselves, only we won't ever, because of the skip tracers, and we'll all be thrown back into camp, only this time they'll—"

"Thank you, Chuckles," Touma cut in, "for that rousing burst of optimism."

"I could be right," he said. "You have to acknowledge that."

"But you could also be wrong," Touma said, dropping a reassuring hand on Index's head. "In any case, that's what we're going with now: this was just a false alarm. Let's see if we can find anything useful, then we'll hit the road."

"Finally. I'm sick of wasting time on things that don't matter, " Springs shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and stalked toward me. If I hadn't jumped out of the way, his shoulder would have knocked into mine and sent me stumbling back.

I turned, my eyes following his path as he kicked rubbish and rocks out of his way. Touma was suddenly standing next to me, his own arms crossed over his chest.

"Don't take it personally," he said. I must have made a sound of disbelief, because he continued. "I mean…okay, the kid is basically a grumpy seventy-year-old man trapped in a seventeen-year-old's body, but he's only being this insufferable to try to push you out."

Yeah, well, I thought, it's working.

"And I know it's not an excuse, but he's as stressed and freaked out as the rest of us and—I guess what I'm trying to say is, all of this acid he's throwing your way? It's coming from a good place. If you stick it out, I swear you won't find a more loyal friend. But he's scared as hell about what'll happen, especially to Index, if we're caught again."

I looked up at that, but Touma was already walking away toward a far row of battered trailers. For one crazy second I thought about following him, but I'd caught Index out of the corner of my eye, her bright yellow gloves swinging at her sides. She jumped in and out of the trailers, stood on her toes to peer into the smashed windows of the RVs, and even, at one point, started to crawl into wreckage of an RV that looked like it had been split in half by a tornado. The metal roof, which was hanging on by what looked like two flimsy joints, was swaying and bouncing under the combined forces of rain and wind.

Although she had the hood of her oversized sweatshirt pulled snug over her head, I watched as one of Index's gloved hands came up and brushed the side of her face—as if she was pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. It didn't strike me as strange until she did it again, only to pale slightly as she caught herself.

The conversation I had tried to have with Springs in the van came crashing back to me.

"Hey, Index…" I began, only to stop short. How were you supposed to ask a little kid if someone had played slice and dice with her brain without trampling over an already painful memory?

The truth of it was, they only shaved kids' heads at Tokiwadai when they wanted to do some poking around inside of their skulls; they had all but stopped by the time I arrived, but it had taken a while for the older kids' hair to grow back out. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had wondered if this wasn't the case with her after all—if the reason she couldn't speak was because they had crossed a few wires they shouldn't have, or gone a step too far in the name of finding a "cure."

"Why did they cut your hair?" I asked, finally.

I knew plenty of girls that would have preferred shorter hair—myself included—but aside from an semiannual haircut for the girls. The way that Index seemed to stroke her ghost hair made me think she hadn't had much say in the matter.

If she had been upset by my question, she didn't show it. Index brought her hands up to her head and began to scrub at it, making a face of acute discomfort. Seeing that I wasn't getting it, she slipped one hand out of its glove and went to work scratching at her scalp.

"Oh," I said. "Oh! You mean your group had lice?"

She nodded.

"Yikes," I said. It made sense, but it still didn't explain why she couldn't open her mouth and answer me. "I'm so sorry."

Index lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, then turned and bounded up into the nearest RV.

The door wobbled and protested as I followed her in, squealing as its hinges worked. Index made a face, and I made one back at her in agreement. The whole home smelled sweet, but…not pleasant. Almost like rotten fruit.

I started in the small, central living space, opening and closing the pale cabinet doors. The seat cushions were done up in an obnoxiously bright purple, but they, like the small TV hanging on the wall across from them, were coated with dust and dirt. The only thing out on the counter was a single coffee mug. The back sleeping area was equally spare—a few cushions, a lamp, and a closet with a red dress, a white button-down shirt, and a whole fleet of empty hangers.

I had only just reached for the shirt when I saw it at the edge of my vision.

Someone had attached it to the RV's windshield in place of a rearview mirror. It was nothing that would have seemed odd from the outside, looking in, or drawn attention unless you were really, truly staring at it. But inside, standing only a few feet away from it, I was close enough to see the red light at the base of it, close enough to see that camera inside was pointed toward everything and everyone that passed by on the road in front of it.

And if I could see Betty from where I was, so could it.

The camera's shape was slightly different from the ones they had at Tokiwadai, but close enough to make me think the same people were behind it. I looked down at Index and she looked up at me.

"Stay right here," I said, reaching for the coffeepot on the table.

I crossed the RV in three steps, the coffeepot out in front of me like a sword. I kicked aside a few empty boxes and trash, and saw, mixed in with the litter of plastic bags, a small red glove. Too small for any adult's hand.

I didn't realize the pot was still in my hand until I brought it down against the device and smashed it. The cheap glass body broke off and fell to the ground, leaving me holding its handle. The black bulb stayed perched exactly where it was, only now, the camera's eye rotated to face me.

It's on, I thought through the haze of panic, searching for something else to smash it with. It's recording.

I didn't remember calling for her, but Index appeared at my side in an instant, stuffing something under the front of her oversized sweatshirt. She must have recognized it, too, because before I could even get another word in, she was pulling off one of her yellow rubber gloves and reaching toward it.

"Don't—!"

I'd never seen a Yellow use their abilities before. I'd suffered the aftereffects, of course—distorts space-time across the camp, Capacity Down when the camp controllers thought one of them had done it on purpose. But they had been gone so long at Tokiwadai that I had stopped trying to imagine what it must have been like for them to speak the mysterious language of ultrasonic frequencies.

Index's fingers had only pointing to against it, but the camera began to let out a high-pitched whine. There was a bloody-red beam of light that seemed to leap from her bare finger to the camera's outer shell. That same line whipped down over the plastic, causing it to smoke and warp under its heat.

Without warning, all of the lights in the RV flashed on, glowing so molten hot that they shattered. The vehicle began to cough and sputter, shaking under our feet, as its engine found itself miraculously revived after a long sleep.

Index jammed her hand back into its glove and crossed her arms over her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if willing it all to stop. But we didn't have time to wait around and see if it would. I moved toward the door, grabbing the front of her sweatshirt to all but drag her out of the RV. She was still stumbling as I pulled her around to the end that faced the road, and Black Betty.

"Come on," I said, not letting her slow. The brightness was gone from her face, blown out like a candle. "It's okay," I lied. "We just need to get the others."

There was a camera installed in the front windshield of every trailer in that front row; I spotted them one by one as we ran back toward Betty. There was no point trying to get rid of them now. Whoever was going to see us had likely already seen us. We just had to get out of there, and fast.

They could be old, I tried telling myself, throwing Betty's door open. They could have been installed years ago, in case of robberies. Who knew where the video they recorded was being sent? Maybe nowhere at all.

And at the same time, my heart was beating out a completely different track. They're coming, they're coming, they're coming.

I thought about yelling for the others, but they could have been anywhere in the park. I climbed into the van after Index and did the only other thing that seemed to made sense in that moment: I banged the heel of my palm against the wheel. The high whine of Betty's horn shook the sleepy landscape awake. A cluster of birds flew up from the nearby trees, hitting the sky at the same moment I began beating out a faster, more insistent rhythm.

Springs appeared first, booking it down one aisle of RVs, and Touma a second later, stumbling a few rows over. When they saw that it was still just us, they both slowed down. An annoyed look crossed Springs's face.

I leaned out of the open driver's side window and shouted, "We have to go—now!"

Touma said something to Springs that I didn't hear, but they did as they were told. I stayed crouched between the two front seats as they boys jumped inside.

"What?" Touma was almost out of breath. "What's wrong?"

I pointed to the nearest trailer. "They have cameras installed," my voice rasped. "In every one of them."

Springs sucked in a sharp breath.

"You're sure?" Touma's voice was calm—too calm. I could tell he was forcing it, even as his fingers fumbled to put the keys in the ignition.

The van's back tires spun against the mud as he threw it into reverse. I went tumbling on to my backside with the force of his acceleration.

"Oh my God," Springs was saying, "I can't believe it. We got Hansel and Greteled. Oh my God—do you think it was her?"

"No," Touma said. "No. She's sneaky for a skip tracer, but this—this is something else."

"They could have been there for a while," I said, just as we found the highway again. It was empty and open in front of us, a gaping mouth ready to swallow us whole. "They could have been spying on the people that lived there. Maybe that really was The Croce di Pietro.…"

Or it was just a trap, for kids looking for the real The Croce di Pietro.

Touma propped his elbow against the door panel and his chin against his palm. When he spoke, the hundreds of snaking cracks in the windshield cut up his reflection. He pushed the minivan up into a faster speed, causing the wind to whistle through the bullet hole. "Just keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anyone or anything acting suspect."

Define suspect. The rows of shuttered houses? A shot-up minivan?

"I knew we should have waited until it was dark," Springs said, tapping his fingers against the passenger seat window. "I knew it. If those cameras were on, they probably got the license plate number and everything."

"I'll take care of the plates," Touma promised.

Springs's lips parted, but he said nothing, only resting his head against the window.

"Should I be looking for Anti-Skins?" I asked, as we drove over another railroad track.

"Worse." Springs sighed. "Skip tracers. Bounty hunters."

"Anti-Skins are stretched pretty thin, by all accounts," Touma explained. "Same with the National Guard and what's left of the local police. I don't know that they'd send a unit all the way out here on a tip. And unless they just so happen to have a resident bounty hunter in this neck of the woods, we're going to be fine."

Those were famous last words if I had ever heard them.

"The reward for turning in a kid is ten thousand dollars." Springs twisted around to look at me. "And the whole country is broke as a joke. We are not going to be fine."

I heard a train in the distance, its horn so similar to the ones that had passed by Tokiwadai at all hours of the night. It was enough for me to dig my fingernails into the skin of my thighs and squeeze my eyes shut until the nausea passed. I didn't even realize the conversation had rolled on without me until I heard Touma ask, "You okay, Biri-biri?"

I reached up and wiped my face, wondering if the wetness there was from the rain, or if I'd been crying without realizing it. I didn't say anything as I crawled to the rear seat. I didn't jump into their conversation about where they would need to look next for The Croce di Pietro, though I wanted to. There were hundreds, thousands, millions of places the Slip Kid could have set up camp, and I wanted to help them puzzle it out. I wanted to be part of it.

But I couldn't ask, and I needed to stop lying to myself. Because every second I stayed with them was another chance for them to discover that skip tracers and Anti-skins weren't the real monsters of the world. No. One of the real ones was sitting in their backseat.

For once, the music was off.

It was the silence from the speakers that unnerved me, more than the deserted roads or the empty shells of repossessed houses. Touma was a constant stream of motion. Looking around the abandoned small towns we drove through, glancing at the gas level, fiddling with the turn signal, fingers dancing on the steering wheel. At one point, his eyes flashed toward mine in the rearview mirror. It was just for an instant, but I felt the small twinge in my stomach as sharply as I would have if he had taken a soft finger and run it down the length of my open palm.

My face was flushed, but something inside of me had gone very cold. It had been half a second, no more, but it was plenty long enough to notice the way his eyes had darkened with something that might have been frustration.

Springs was in the front seat folding and unfolding something in his lap, over and over again, almost like he didn't realize he was doing it.

"Will you cut that out?" Touma burst out, agitated. "You'll rip it."

Springs stopped immediately. "Can't we just…try? Do we need the Slip Kid for this?"

"Do you really want to risk it?"

"Stiyl would have."

"Right, but Stiyl…" Touma's voice trailed off. "Let's just play it safe. He'll help us when we get there."

"If we get there," Springs huffed.

"Stiyl?" I didn't realize I had said it aloud until Touma's eyes looked up at me in the rearview mirror.

"It's none of your business," Springs said, and left it at that.

Touma was only a little more forthcoming. "Stiyl Magnus. He was our friend—in our room at camp, I mean. We're trying…we're just trying to get in touch with his dad. It's one of the reasons we need to hit up the Slip Kid."

I nodded toward the sheet of paper. "But before you guys broke out, he wrote a letter?"

"The three of us each did," Touma said. "In case one of us backed out at the last minute and didn't want to come or…didn't make it out."

"Which Stiyl did not." Springs's voice could have cut steel. Behind him, house after gorgeous colonial house passed in rapid-fire succession, their colors winking at us through her window.

"Anyway." Touma cleared his throat. "We're trying to put his letter in his dad's hands. We tried going to the address Stiyl gave us, but the house had been repossessed. He left a note saying he was going to D.C. for work, but no new address or phone number. That's why we need the Slip Kid's help—to find where he is now."

"You can't just mail it?"

"They started scanning mail for this exact reason about two years after you went to Tokiwadai," Touma explained. "The government reads all, speaks all, and writes all. They've crafted a lovely little story about how we're all being saved and reprogrammed back into sweet little darlings at camp, and they don't want anyone to get wind of the truth."

I honestly had no idea what to say to that.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I didn't mean to give you a shakedown about it."

"It's okay," Touma said, after the silence had stretched to the point of breaking. "It's fine."

There wasn't a way to explain how I knew. Maybe it was the way Touma's hands tightened on the steering wheel, or how he kept glancing in his side mirror throughout the conversation, long after a silver car had passed us from the other direction. It could have been the way his shoulders sagged, sloping down in a way that was so defeated. I just knew, long before I caught his worried eyes in the rearview mirror.

Slowly, without disturbing Index and Springs as they watched an endless stream of forest pass by the side windows, I crouched between the two front seats again.

Touma met my gaze for a split second, nodding in the direction of his side mirror. See for yourself, he seemed to say. So I did.

Trailing behind us, back about two car lengths, was an old white pickup truck. With the rain fogging up the air between the two cars, I couldn't tell if there were one or two men inside. They looked like little more than two black ants from where I was sitting.

"Interesting," I said, keeping my voice even.

"Yep," he said, his jaw clenched. The muscles of his neck strained. "Gotta love Glorious mountainous provinces. Land of Adventure Songs."

"Maybe…" I began slowly, "you should pull over and look at a map?"

It was one way of feeling out the situation. Touma was about to turn onto slightly wider than the twisting road we were leaving. If the truck was following us, they wouldn't be able to stop without revealing it. In any case, whoever was driving the truck wasn't being aggressive about it. If he was a bounty hunter, as Touma apparently thought, they were probably feeling us out, too.

We continued on road, following his natural curve. Black Betty slowed in anticipation of the upcoming turn. Touma hesitated half a second before flipping his turn signal on. I looked in the mirror, my heart lifting when I saw the truck turn its other blinker on. They were turning right. We were going left.

Touma blew out a long sigh, finally sitting back against his seat as the minivan reached the intersection of the highway and the road. There was another car turning off the highway, a small silver Volkswagen; both Touma and I threw up a hand to block the intense glint of the sun against its windows.

"Okay, Old Man River." Touma gave the car an impatient wave. "Go ahead and turn before the next century. No, take your time, shave, contemplate the universe… fukoda."

Nirvana was blasting through the pickup truck's open windows as it pulled up alongside us, creaking and groaning in the way all old cars seem to do. "Smell Like Teen Spirit." Of course. It had to be Dad's favorite. Two seconds into the damn song, and it was like I was back in the front seat of his squad car, cruising around town. That was the only time I got to listen to the good music—when it was just the two of us, cruising. Mom hated the stuff.

A laugh bubbled up inside of me as I watched the driver bob his head in time with the music. He howled the words at the top of his lungs, exhaling each lyric with a puff of cigarette smoke.

And then it was replaced by a different sound—a shriek of sorts. I looked up just in time to see the Volkswagen slam on its brakes right in front of us, jolting to a stop and sending another blinding glare of sunlight our way.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Touma made as if to press his hand down on the horn, but not before the driver of the Volkswagen rolled down his window and pointed something black and gleaming at us.

No. The world went into sharp focus. Sound evaporated around me. NO.

I reached up and slapped Black Betty's radio button on, turning it up as loud as it would go. Touma and Springs both started yelling, but I knocked Touma's hand away before he could switch it off.

The Capacity Down cut straight through the music from the speakers, tearing at our ears. Not as loud or as powerful as I was used to, and not even close to as bad as it had been last time, but still there, still agonizing. My radio trick couldn't drown it out, not completely.

The others crumbled around me, shriveling at the first piercing shriek.

Touma fell forward against the wheel, mashing his hands up against his ears. Springs knocked his head into the passenger seat window, as if trying to ram the noise out of his head. I felt Black Betty began to drift forward, only to jerk to a stop when Touma hit the brakes instead of the gas.

The door opened beside me, and a pair of arms circled Springs's waist, trying to untangle him from the seat belt. I pulled myself up off the floor and lashed a hand out, catching the man's cheek and raking my fingernails down as hard as I could. It was enough to startle the truck driver, the same one that had been nodding his head to "Smeel like teen spirit" two seconds before, into dropping Springs. He was left half hanging in his seat, half hanging out.

The driver stumbled back against the bed of his truck, his words drowned out by the thunderstorm of noise that had settled over the three cars. It was only then that I saw the badge hanging around his neck on a silver cord, and the bright red Ψ stitched there. They weren't skip tracers.

Esper. Anti-Skins. Camp. Tokiwadai. Capture.

The man from the Volkswagen had opened the driver's side door of the van and was trying to unhook Touma's seat belt. He wasn't large in any sense of the word—he looked like he could have been an accountant, with thick glasses and hunched shoulders from spending too many hours at a desk. But he didn't need strength, not when he was holding the black megaphone in his hands.

Some of the Anti-Skins at Tokiwadai carried the noise machines around with them, blasting them at small, rowdy groups, or just to see a few kids squirm. What did they care? They couldn't hear it.

Every nerve in my body was singing, but I launched my elbow into the chest of the pickup truck driver. He fell back again, and I pulled the door shut and locked it. I only had a second to look back at Index as I dove across Touma's body, fist-first. I nailed Volkswagen in the glasses, knocking them off his face. Somewhere behind me, Pickup Truck had moved on to the sliding door, and this time he wasn't empty-handed.

Index didn't flinch as the rifle was pointed in her face—by the way she was moaning, her eyes scrunched up and her yellow gloves curled over her ears in agony, I don't think she was seeing straight.

I didn't know what to do. My hands were on Touma, trying to shake him back into consciousness. His eyes flashed open, deep dark blue, but it was only for an instant. The megaphone was suddenly two inches from my face, and the Capacity Down sunk into my brain like an ax. My bones went to jelly. The only thing louder than the Capacity down, than the radio, than Springs's screams, was the sound of Touma's heart racing.

I squeezed my eyes shut again, my fingers curling into the soft leather of Touma's coat. Half of me wanted to push away, put enough distance between us that I had no chance of sliding into his mind—but the other half of me, the desperate part, was already trying to push through, to anchor myself to him and will him to move. If I could hurt someone, shouldn't that mean I could help them, too?

Get up, I begged, get up, get up, get up, get up…

There was a high-pitched wail, a sound that couldn't have possibly come from a human. I forced my eyes open. Pickup Truck had his rifle in one hand and the collar of Index's shirt in the other, and he was tugging both in the direction of the truck. I tried to scream for her, even as I felt Volkswagen's hands in my hair, yanking me up and out of the door. He let me hit the ground hard, the loose gravel cutting open my legs and palms.

I rolled onto my side, trying to twist away from the Anti-Skin's reach. From under Betty, I saw flutters of yellow dropping to the road like two small birds, and heard a door slam.

"Kamijou—confirm Esper number 42755 spotted—" Volkswagen wrenched the driver's side door open again, pulling something bright orange from his pocket. I swiped at my eyes, trying to force the double image of him I was seeing back into one. The orange device in the Anti-Skin's free hand was no bigger than a cell phone, easy enough to maneuver in front of Touma's face from where it was pressed against the minivan's steering wheel.

Taking a swipe at the Anti-Skin's ankle with my hand was pointless—he was so involved with whatever it was he was doing that he didn't so much as notice.

Touma! My mouth wasn't moving, it wasn't working. Touma!

The orange device flashed, and a moment later, above even the wailing of the Capacity Down, I heard Volkswagen say, "That's a positive ID on Kamijou Touma."

Something hot and sharp cut through the air, billowing out under Betty like a stinging cloud of sand. I felt it rub up against my bare skin and had to turn my face away from the blinding light that came next—a flash burn that erased anything and everything that stood in its way. I heard Volkswagen cuss from above me, only to be drowned out by the sound of metal screeching against metal, glass exploding so hard, so fast, that tiny shards dropped like hail onto the ground in front of me.

And then it was gone. The noise of Capacity Down cut out sharply as something clattered to the ground and landed a short distance away. The megaphone.

I stretched my arm out, hand groping for the megaphone's handle. Volkswagen was screaming something that I couldn't hear over the ringing in my ears, and I was too focused on getting the bullhorn to actually give a damn and listen. A hand wrapped around my bare ankle and tugged me back across the ground—but not before my fingers closed around the handle.

"Get up, you piece of—!" There was a digital squeak, like an alarm, and the man immediately dropped my leg. "This is Amai, requesting immediate backup—"

I pushed myself up on my knees with a grunt, then my feet. The man had his back turned to me one second too long, and when he finally realized his mistake and looked over his shoulder, he was rewarded with a face full of metal as I swung the megaphone.

His radio clattered to the asphalt, and I kicked it out of his reach. Both of his hands went up, trying to shield his face from another hit, but I wasn't going to go easy on him. I wasn't going to let him take me back to Tokiwadai.

My hand closed over his exposed forearm, and I yanked it, forcing him to look down at me. I watched his pupils shrink in his hazel eyes before blowing back out to their normal size. The man had a foot of height on me, but you never would have known by the way he dropped to his knees in front of me. He hadn't even been able to catch his breath, let alone keep me from walking straight into his mind.

Leave! I tried to say. My jaw was clenched, the muscles there seized as though the White Noise was still running through them like a current of pulsing electricity. Leave!

I had never done this before, and there was no way to know if it would actually work—but what did I have to lose now? Electricity flows through your body before his memories flooded over me, wave after wave lapping at my brain, and all I could think was, I'm going to do this. It is going to work.

Kakine Teitoku had said that he pushed feelings into people with your dark matter, but my abilities didn't work that way, and they never had. I only saw images.

But I'd never tried to do anything else. I had never wanted to, before this moment. Because if I couldn't help these kids, if I couldn't save them, then what good was I? What point did I even have? Do it. Just do it.

I imagined the memories clean up—every detail, from the moment he receving the call about the van until the request for cried out as the electricity wracked his body

And when I released my fingers from his arm and I opened my eyes, his body fall out with smoke out of his body unconscious.

I turned to where black smoke spilled out over the road, coating the hill's grass and hidden edges in a thick, ugly blanket. Then, I remembered.

Index.

I could see the wreckage clearly now as I limped forward. The pickup truck, which at one point had been parked beside Betty, was now several hundred feet away, resting in the empty green field. The smaller silver Volkswagen was on its side in front of it, a heap of twisted metal that I barely recognized. It was smoking wildly, belching out thick smoke, as if it were only one small spark away from exploding.

It rammed it, I realized. The truck rammed it out of the way.

I followed the trail of tire marks and glass, but I only found Truck Driver. What was left of him.

His body was tangled up in itself in the wild grass; I couldn't tell where one limb began and the other ended. None of them seemed to be in their right place. His elbows stuck up from the ground like two broken wings. He had been rammed, too.

Something cold and brittle wrapped itself around my chest, forcing me back out of the haze of smoke once I confirmed Index wasn't in either car. I waited until I cleared the heaviest of the smoke before falling to my knees and throwing up what little food I had in my stomach.

It was only when I looked up that I finally saw her, sitting on the road just beside Betty, her back slumped forward, her head bowed, but alive—alive and safe. My mind clung to those two words as I tried calling for her again. Index looked up, panting. As I stumbled closer, the smoke revealed her in pieces: bloodshot eyes, a cut on her forehead, tears streaming down her dirt-stained cheeks.

My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat as I knelt down in front of her, and for several agonizing seconds, it was all that I could hear.

"O…kay?" I asked, my mouth feeling like mush.

Her teeth chattered as she nodded.

"What…happened?" I squeezed out.

Index curled down on herself like she was trying to vanish from my sight. Her yellow gloves were beside her on the ground, and her bare hands were still up and facing forward, as if she had only touched the truck a second before.

I didn't know what to say to get her to calm down—I didn't even know how to calm myself down. This girl, This Yellow—she'd destroyed two vehicles and one life in a matter of seconds. And, by the looks of it, she'd done it with a single touch.

But even knowing that, she was still Index, and those hands? They were the ones that had pulled me to safety.

I lifted her back into Betty with shaking arms. Index was hot, well past the point of feeling feverish. Dropping her into the closest seat, I pressed my hands against her cheeks, but her eyes couldn't focus on me. I was about to roll the door shut when she grabbed my wrist and pointed toward her gloves on the ground.

"Got 'em," I said. I tossed them to her, and then turned to confront a heavier load.

Springs was still passed out in the passenger seat, his body hanging out of the open door. The truck driver hadn't been able to maneuver his long limbs farther than that, thank God—otherwise Springs probably would have been in the grass with the driver. His limp sack of bones smacked against the door as I slammed it shut behind him.

I tripped over the tips of my tennis shoes as I made my way around the front of the van. With a cloud of bright spots bleaching out my sight, I pulled the driver's door open the rest of the way. Touma was also still out cold, and no amount of shaking was able to stir him up into consciousness. Index began to whimper, her cries muffled as she pressed her face against her knees.

"You're okay, Index," I said. "We're all okay. We're gonna be fine."

I untangled Touma's arms from the gray seat belt and half pushed, half rolled him off the driver's seat. I wasn't strong enough to deposit him into one of the back seats, not right then. So he ended up on the ground, wedged between the two front seats. With his face turned up toward me, I could see the muscles around his mouth twitch, every so often turning the corners of his lips up in an unnatural smile.

I stared at the wheel, trying to bring to mind the right steps to getting the van to work. Trying to remember what Touma had done, what Kiyama had done, what my father used to do. Sixteen, and I couldn't even figure out where the goddamn parking brake was, let alone if it was actually on.

In the end, it didn't matter. I could drive with it on or off, apparently, and all I really needed to know was that the right pedal was go, and the left was stop, and there really wasn't a whole lot more to it than that.

Betty tore through the thickest heart of the smoke, and chased it down the open road until we were finally, finally, finally free of the wreckage, and the air coming through the vents no longer carried the echo of the noise Capacity Down into our heads, or smell of smoke into our lungs.


	12. Chapter 11

ELEVEN

I GOT MAYBE TEN MILES BEFORE the boys began to rouse. With Index still crying in the backseat and me having no idea where we had been headed in the first place, to say I was relieved was an understatement.

"Holy crap," Touma croaked. He pressed a hand against the side of his head and startled, sitting straight up. "Holy crap!"

His face had been inches away from Springs's feet, so his hands went there first, yanking at them like he was making sure they were still attached to something. Springs let out a low moan and said, "I think I'm going to be ill."

"Index?" Touma crawled toward her, earning another yelp out of Springs as he kicked his leg. "Index? Did you—?"

She only cried harder, burying her face in her gloves.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry—I'm so sorry—I—" Touma sounded agonized, like his guts were being torn straight out of him. I watched him press his fist against his mouth, heard him try to clear his throat, but he couldn't get another word out.

"Index," I said, sounding strangely calm to my own ears. "Listen to me. You saved us. We wouldn't have made it without you."

Touma's head jerked around, as if just remembering I was there. I winced, but how could I be upset that he would check on his real friends first?

I felt his eyes on the back of my neck as he worked his way back up to me. When he reached the driver's seat, he collapsed into it, his face drawn and pale. "Are you all right?" he asked, his voice rough. "What happened? How did you get us out?"

"It was Index," I began, already well aware of the narrow line I'd have to walk between the truth and what I could actually tell them—both for myself and for Index's sake. I wasn't sure how much she actually remembered from what happened, but I wasn't about to confirm any of her fears. In the end, all I said was, "She sent one car crashing into the other. It knocked one of the guys out and sent the other one running."

"What was"—Springs was having a hard time breathing—"that horrible noise?"

I stared at him, my mouth trying to push the words past my disbelief. "You've never heard that before?"

The boys both shook their heads. "Jesus," Touma said, "that was like hearing a cat go through a blender while being electrocuted."

"You really didn't have Capacity Down? White Noise?" I demanded, surprised by the anger licking at my heart. What camp had these kids been in? Candy Land?

"And you did?" Touma shook his head, probably trying to clear the ringing.

"They used it at Tokiwadai to…disable us," I explained. "When there were outbursts or problems. Keeps you from being able to think long enough to use your abilities."

"Why are you all right?" Springs wheezed, half suspicious, half jealous.

That was the question of the day, wasn't it? My long, sordid history with the Capacity Down included several episodes of fainting, vomiting, and memory loss, not to mention my most recent experience with bleeding profusely out of my eyes and nose. I guess once you'd had a taste of the worst, pretty bad isn't all that terrible. If it was their first time dealing with it, that would at least explain why they wilted like dead grass after only a few seconds.

Touma was searching my face, and I wondered what he was seeing. All of it? I thought of how his jacket had felt against my cheek, the curve of his spine, and something calm and warm settled in my chest.

"I'm used to it, I guess," I said. "And Greens aren't as affected as Blues and the others." I remembered to add this. A truth and a lie.

Touma offered to trade seats as soon as his face lost that familiar pinched look, and a healthy color began to return to his cheeks. The kid deserved a round of applause for how well he was hiding the tremors in his hands and legs from the others, but I had a trained eye. I recognized the nasty after-bites of the White Noise as the old friends they were. He needed a few more minutes.

"Come on," he said as the dashboard clock clicked off another minute. "You've done…" His voice trailed off.

I looked down at him, only to realize he was looking at me—or, more accurately, my bony, busted knees. A moment later, after I returned my gaze to the road, I felt something warm hovering just above my leg and jerked away.

"Ah—sorry," Touma whispered, pulling his hand back. I watched the tips of his ears go a bright cherry red. "It's just—you're all cut up. Please, can we stop for a second? We should regroup. Figure out where we are."

But I didn't want to just pull over alongside some random stretch of fence and pasture; I waited until we had found an old rest stop, complete with its red-brick colonial-style finish, and turned the van off the road and into the deserted parking lot.

Springs took the opportunity to try to empty the contents of his stomach onto the ground but accomplished little more than some enthusiastic dry heaving. Touma stood and patted his back. "Will you help biribiri when you're done?"

Springs might have hated me, or wanted to scare me off, but he at least recognized I had played some small part in saving his skin. He didn't say yes, though, only crossed his arms over his chest and blew out a long, martyred sigh.

"Thanks," Touma said. "You're the best, Mother Teresa."

He went out the sliding door behind my seat and made a beeline for the small cluster of silver water fountains that stood between him and the restroom entrances. Index followed him out, bounding across the distance with a pink duffel bag in hand. By the time I turned my attention back to him, Springs had collected himself enough to start poking and prodding me.

"Easy!" I gasped when his finger brushed my elbow. He jabbed a finger against one of the overhead lights and it snapped on at his command. I finally saw that the skin from my elbow down to my wrist had been rubbed raw by the road.

"Turn toward me." Springs looked like he was fighting with all the strength he had left in him not to roll his eyes at me. "Now, Mikoto, before I grow a beard."

I twisted myself around so my legs were facing toward him in the passenger seat. Unsurprisingly, they looked just about as pretty as my arm did. Both knees were skinned and already scabbing over in places, but aside from a few stray scratches and bruises that had nothing to do with the attack, they were in much better shape than my hands.

Springs pulled what looked like a briefcase out from under his seat and popped the clasps on it open. I was only able to sneak a quick glance inside before he pulled out four white square packets and shut it again.

"God, how did you even manage to do this?" he muttered as he ripped the first one open. I smelled the antiseptic and tried to squirm away.

Chubs glowered at me from over the rims of his glasses. "If you're going to make yourself at home, could you at least try to take better care of yourself? It's hard enough as it is to keep the other two in one piece without you flinging yourself at danger, too."

"I didn't fling—" I began, then thought better of it. "Sorry?"

"Yeah, well," he huffed. "Not as sorry as you'll be if any of these cuts get infected."

He brought my right hand up close to his face in order to get a better look, and I tried not to wince as he began to swipe at it with one of the disinfecting wipes about as tenderly as a wolf shredding apart its dinner. The sting that followed snapped me out of the hazy, numb stupor I was falling into. Suddenly aware of his touch, I wrenched my hand away from his and took the cold wet cloth from his hand. It didn't hurt any less when I cleaned the small bits of asphalt out myself.

"You should go check on Touma and Index," I said.

"No, because then they'll be all pissed off I'm not taking care of you." After a moment he admitted, somewhat reluctantly, "Besides, you did seem to…well, you're worse off than the rest of us, at least. They can wait." He must have seen the corner of my mouth twitch, because he added, "But don't think you're going to get all the bandages—these are superficial wounds at best."

"Yes, sir," I said, tossing the disinfectant wipe out of the window. He handed me a new one for my other palm, eyes still narrowed, but maybe, just maybe, softening at the edges. I felt myself relax a bit, but I wasn't suffering under any delusion that we were about to start braiding friendship bracelets for each other.

"Why did you lie?"

My head shot up at his question, suddenly feeling very light. "I didn't—what are you—I'm not—"

"About Index." He glanced back over his shoulder. His voice was quiet when he continued. "You said she only knocked that guy out, but…that wasn't the case, was it? He was killed."

I nodded. "She didn't mean to—"

"Obviously not," he said, sharply. "I was wondering why no one was coming after us, and I got worried, knowing what it would do to her…and, well, I guess you have some common sense after all."

It came to me then as I looked at him—one of those rare, perfect crystallization's of understanding. He wanted me out because he saw me as a threat to them. He wouldn't ever trust me until I proved myself otherwise—and after my slip in messing up the color of the SUV, that was likely to be half past never.

"What's the world with one less skip tracer, anyway nyaa~?" He bent down to retrieve his briefcase again, replacing the unused supplies in it.

That's right, I thought, sitting up straighter. I didn't tell them.

"They weren't skip tracers. They were Anti-Skins."

At that, Springs actually barked out a laugh. "And I'm guessing their uniforms were stuffed under their plaid shirts and jeans?"

"One of them was wearing a badge," I said. "And the orange device they were using—I saw one at Tokiwadai, once." Springs didn't look convinced, but we didn't have the time—and I certainly did not have the energy—to be running circles around the truth for the next hour. "Look," I continued, "you don't have to believe me, but you should know that one of them radioed in a Esper number—42755. That's Touma, right?"

I gave the story from my end and left the rest for him to fill in from his side. By the time I got to a description of the orange device, he had heard quite enough. He sucked in a deep breath, his lips drawing together to a point, until he looked more ferret than human. I held my own breath as he rolled down his window and proceeded to relate, down to the exact words, what I had just finished telling him, like he didn't trust me to do it myself.

"I told you the Anti-Skins would catch up to us!" he kept repeating, like we hadn't heard him shout it the first ten times. "We're just lucky it wasn't her."

I wondered who he meant but knew better than to ask.

Touma ignored him and kept his back to us, still bent over the silver drinking fountain. Index stood next to him, dutifully holding the button down so he could use both hands to scrub his face in the stream of water shooting out of it.

I used the last of the wipes to clean the dirt off my own face. "I just want to know how that Anti-Skin recognized him, even before he used this orange thing. It flashed, but he knew the number off the top of his head. He didn't need to wait for it to tell him that."

Springs stared at me a moment, then brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Everyone had their photo taken when they were processed. Didn't you?"

I nodded. "So they put together a network for searching the photos?" I asked.

"Mikoto, how the hell am I supposed to know that?" he said. "Describe it to me again."

The orange gadget must have been some sort of a camera or scanner—that was the only explanation I could drum up that Springs didn't shoot down as being moronic.

I pressed my hands against my eyes, trying to fight back the urge to vomit.

"It's bad news if that's all it takes for them to ID us," Springs said, rubbing a hand over his forehead and smoothing out the wrinkles there. "If we weren't already screwed—they probably know we're looking for The Croce di Pietro now, which means they're going to have more patrols out, which means they're going to be watching our families even closer, which means it'll be even harder for the Slip Kid…"

He never finished his train of thought. He didn't have to.

I let out a humorless laugh. "C'mon. They're going to send out a whole armada for a few freaks?"

"First of all, armadas are comprised of ships," Springs said. "And second, no, they wouldn't send one out for a few freaks."

"Then what's the—"

"But they would send one out to get Touma."

He didn't wait for me to piece it together.

"Mikoto, who do you think was the mastermind behind our camp's breakout?"

When the others were ready to return to the minivan, we played a silent game of musical chairs. Springs took the middle seat on the passenger side, and Index, her usual perch behind the driver's seat. I had two options at that point: crawl into the rear seat or tough it out in the front seat, while trying to act like everything was all hunky-dory and pretending that Springs hadn't just told me Touma was responsible for what might have been the only successful camp breakout ever.

In the end, exhaustion won out. I managed to collapse into the passenger seat feeling about as lovely as a wilted head of lettuce, just as Touma climbed into the driver's seat.

He grinned. "Must be tiring being the big hero."

I waved him off, trying to quiet the small, ridiculous buzz of happiness in my chest that came with his words. He was just trying to be nice.

"Good thing we had the ladies there to take care of business," he continued, turning to Springs. "Otherwise you and I would be rolling around in the bed of a truck, halfway back to Urayasu camp."

Springs only grunted, his coloring still faintly gray.

Touma looked a little better, at least. His face was tinged pink from the shock of cold fountain water, and his fingers still seemed to be twitching every so often, but his eyes had lost that cloudy, unfocused look. Considering it was his first time being ear-tased by the Capacity Down, Touma had recovered fast.

"All right, team," he said, slowly. "Time for a Betty vote."

"No!" Springs startled back to life. "I know exactly where you're going with this, and I know I'm going to be overruled, and I—"

"All those in favor of letting our girl wonder stay with us for the time being, raise your hand."

Both Touma and Index raised their hands immediately. Index looked at me with a smile that seemed particularly bright next to Springs's glowering face.

"We don't know anything about her—hell, we don't know that what she has told us is even true!" he objected. "She could be a psychopath who kills us in our sleep, or calls her League buddies in just when we let our guard down."

"Gee, thanks," I said dryly, half flattered he thought I was capable of that level of scheming.

"The longer she stays with us," he added, "the more likely it is the League will catch up to us, and you know what they do to their kids!"

"They won't catch up with us," Touma said. "We took care of that already. If we stay together, we'll be fine."

"No. No, no, no, no, no," Springs said. "I want to register my nay vote, even though the two of you always win."

"Well, don't be a bad sport about it," Touma said. "This is democracy in action."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Of course I am," Touma said. "What I wasn't okay with was the thought of dropping you off at some back-of-beyond Greyhound station with no money, no papers, and no way of knowing for sure you got where you're going safe and sound."

There it was again—that smile. The blood rose so fast it made me dizzy I pressed my hand against my chest, trying to keep things at bay. Locked inside. To keep my hand from reaching out to brush the one he had put on the armrest of my seat. It seemed so sick, so wrong, but all I wanted to do was slip inside his mind and see what he was thinking. Why he was looking at me like that.

You really are a monster, I thought, pressing a fist tight against my stomach.

I wanted to protect him—at that moment, it was suddenly clear to me exactly what I wanted: to protect them, all of them. They had saved me. They had saved my life and hadn't expected a single thing in return. If the showdown with the undercover Anti-Skins had shown me anything, it was that they needed someone like me. I could help them, protect them.

I didn't think I could ever begin to repay them for taking me in and letting me stay as long as I had, but if I could control myself long enough, it would be a start. It was the best I could do with what I had.

"Where are you trying to go, anyway?" Touma tried to keep his voice casual, but his eyes had darkened, obviously troubled. "Could you even get there on a bus if you tried?"

I told them the feeble plan I'd half-baked inside of the gas station. I fingered the ends of my shot, tangled hair, and was surprised to feel some of the tightness in my chest ease up long enough for me to take a deep breath.

"What's in Tsu?"

"My grandmother, I think," I said. "I hope."

Yes, Grams, I reminded myself. Grams was still an option. She remembered me, didn't she? If I could help them find the Slip Kid—and if he could help me—then wasn't there a real chance I could see her again? Live with her?

It was a lot of ifs. If we found the Slip Kid. If he was an Level 5. If he could help me figure out how to control my abilities. If he could help us contact our families.

Once I had tapped into the vein of doubts, the rest came flooding in.

What if Grams—the thought was crushing—had passed away? She was seventy when I was taken, which meant she'd be inching closer to eighty. I had never even considered it a possibility, because I couldn't remember a time that she didn't look glowing and ready to take on the world with little more than her silver hair, a neon fanny pack, and matching visor.

But if I wasn't the same person I had been six years ago, how could I expect her to be? If she was alive, how could I ask her to take care of her freak granddaughter—protect me and hide me—when there was a chance she couldn't take care of herself?

It was too much to think about now, too much to consider and agonize over in a logical way. My brain was still thrumming from the effects of the Capacity Down, but my weak heart made the choice easy for me.

"All right," I said. "I'll stay."

And hope that none of us regret it.

The deep wrinkle that had appeared between Touma's brows eased but didn't disappear. I knew he was studying me, his light eyes flicking over my face. Trying to figure out, maybe, why I had hesitated so long to agree. Whatever conclusion he came to made him sit back with a sigh and adjust the mirrors in silence.

Touma had the kind of face that you could read and instantly know what he was thinking—it made it easy to trust that whatever he was saying was true. But there was a practiced quality to his expression now, an intense concentration to keep his face blank. It looked unnatural on someone who seemed to always have a grin tucked in the corner of his mouth. I leaned back, trying to ignore the throbbing in my head and the pitiful dying animal noises coming from Springs once he remembered how much pain he was in.

Touma silently passed him a half-empty water bottle from under the driver's seat. I glanced back at Index out of the corner of my eye, but the twilight had lulled her to sleep. A thin sheen of sweat coated her forehead and the skin above her lips.

The car rumbled back to life. Touma exhaled as he cut a diagonal path through the parking lot. He didn't seem to know which direction to turn when we finally found the road.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

He was silent for a moment, scratching his chin. "We're still headed to Iga, if I can find it. I think we crossed the line 139 a while back, but I don't know where we landed. Not too familiar with this area, to be honest."

"Use the damn map, kami-yan" Springs groused behind him.

"I can figure it out without it," Touma insisted. He kept swiveling his head back and forth, like he expected someone to appear and guide him in the right direction with road flares and fanfare.

Five minutes later, the map was spread out over the steering wheel, and Springs was gloating in the backseat. I leaned over the armrest, trying to make sense of the pastel colors and crisscrossing lines on the flimsy, ripped paper.

Touma pointed out the boundaries of Nara, Higashiosaka and Katano.

"I think we're about…here?" He pointed to a tiny dot that was surrounded by a rainbow of crisscrossed lines.

"I don't suppose Black Betty has GPS?" I said.

Touma blew out a sigh, patting the steering wheel. He had decided we were going right. "Black Betty may drive the straight and true path, but souped up, she is not."

"I told you we should have taken that Ford SUV," Springs said.

"That piece of—" Touma caught himself. "That box on wheels was a death trap—not to mention its transmission was shot to hell."

"So, naturally, the next choice was a minivan."

"Yep, she called to me from the parking lot of abandoned cars. The sun was shining through her windows like a beacon of hope."

Springs groaned. "Why are you so weird?"

"Because my weird has to be able to cancel out your weird, Lady Cross-stitch."

"At least what I do is considered an art form, nya~" Springs said.

"Yes, in ye olde medieval Europe you would've been quite the catch—"

"Anyway," I cut in, now in full possession of the map, "we have to be close to here." I pointed to a dot on the western end of Nara.

"What makes you say that?" Touma began. "Are you from this area? Because if—"

"I'm not. I just remember driving past Hatamon Shrine while the two of you were out. And with all the Camping Trailer abandoned Trails signs, we should be near of Katano."

"Those are some good detective skills, Nancy Drew, but, unfortunately, those signs pretty much mean nothing in this part of the country," Touma said. "You can barely go fifty feet without hitting a historical shrine marker for the place, or that guy died, or where Lago Biwa are—"

"That's in Hikone," I interrupted. "We're nowhere near that."

The soft blue light of evening gathered around his spiky hair, framing her face. He studied me for a minute, scratching his chin again. "So you are from here, then."

"I'm not—"

He held up a hand. "Please. No one outside gives a crap about where Lago Biwa's house is."

I sat back. Walked right into that one.

It was my mom's fault. As a high school history teacher, it had been her personal mission to cart Dad and me around to every major historical site in the area. So while my friends got to have pool parties and sleepovers, I got to walk around one shrine after another, posing for pictures with trees, castles and archaeological sites. Fun times, made even more fun by the thousands of bug bites and peeling sunburns I always showed up with on the first day of school.

Touma smiled at the dark road, keeping the minivan's headlights off. I thought it was fairly brave—or stupid—considering the provinces of the region had never considered it a priority to install lights on its highways and roads.

"I think we should stop for the night," Springs said. "Are you going to find a park?"

"Relax, buddy; I got this," Touma said.

"You keep saying that," Springs muttered, sitting back, "and then it's, Oh, sorry team, let's huddle together for warmth, while the bears try to break in and eat our food."

"Yeah…sorry about that," Touma said. "But hey, what's life without a little adversity?"

That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.

I lost track of their conversation after that. It wasn't that I had no interest in hearing all about the bizarre traditions and habits they'd managed to form in the two weeks since escaping their camp; I was exhausted with trying to figure out why, exactly, those two were able to cling to the thin thread that bound their friendship together.

Eventually Touma found Highway 169, and Springs found a shallow, restless sleep. The endless stream of old trees, only a few fully dressed for spring, passed by my window. We were going too fast, and we were too far into twilight, for me to make out the patchwork of leaves that had grown in. Wherever we were, there were still traces of the dead leaves from the fall before staining the highway's cement. Almost as though we were the first car to drive the road in quite some time.

I leaned my forehead against the cool glass, reaching over to point the AC vent directly at my face. My headache was still there, pinching the space behind my eyes. The freezing air would help keep me awake, and, if nothing else, alert enough to catch my mind blindly groping for Touma's.

"You okay?"

He was trying to watch both the road and me. In the dark, I couldn't do much else besides make out the curve of his nose and lips. A part of me was glad I couldn't see the bruises and cuts there. It had only been a few days, a blink in my collective sixteen years of life, but I didn't need to see his face to know soft concern would be there. Touma was a great many things, but mysterious and unpredictable weren't included in that deck of cards.

"Are you okay?" I countered.

The car was quiet enough for me to hear his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. "Just need to sleep it off, I think." Then, after a moment, he added, "Did they really use that on you at Tokiwadai? A lot?"

Not a lot, but enough. I couldn't tell him that, though, without fanning the flames of his pity.

"Do you think the Anti-Skins figured out where you're going?" I asked instead.

"Maybe. We could have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Springs woke behind us with a loud yawn.

"Not likely," he said sleepily. "Even if they weren't intentionally tracking us, I'm sure they are now. They were probably forced to memorize your ugly mug and Esper number. We already know you're a tasty treat for the skip tracers"

"Thank you Mr. Sunshine and Smiles," Touma gritted out.

"For what it's worth, the guy seemed surprised that it was actually you," I said. "But…who is this person you keep talking about? The woman?"

"Lady Kihara," Touma said, as if that explained everything.

"Excuse me?"

"It's what we call one of the more…persistent skip tracers," he continued.

"First, it's what you call her," Springs said. "And second, persistent? Try she's been on us like a shadow ever since we got out of Urayasu camp. She shows up everywhere, at any time, like she can guess what we're going to do before we do it."

"The lady is good at what she does," Touma confirmed.

"Can you please not compliment the person trying to drag our asses back to camp?"

"Why do you call her Lady Kihara?" I asked.

Touma shrugged. " She's a rare Scientist British lass have glamorous proportions and is "well-endowed"."

"How did that happen?" I asked. "I thought they closed all the borders."

Touma opened his mouth to answer, but Springs got there first. "I don't know, Mikoto; why don't you hit her up for a chat and tea next time she comes around to capture us?"

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe I will if you tell me what she looks like."

"A woman with wavy orange hairgathered into a ponytail, She also wears a pair of glasses..—" Touma began.

"—long, sort of hooked nose?" I finished.

"You've seen her?"

"In Kamakura. She was the one driving the red truck, but…" Kiyama and Keitz had taken care of that. She had been left behind. "Well, she wasn't there this time," I finished. "Maybe we lost her for real."

"Fat chance," Springs grumbled. "The woman is a Terminator."

We passed one rundown motel after another, some occupied more than others. I sat up in my seat when Touma turned into an old Comfort Inn's parking lot, only to immediately back out of it with a low whistle. There were no cars in the parking lot, but a dozen or more men and women were hanging around outside of their rooms, smoking, talking, fighting.

"We saw this a lot driving through Urayasu road," he explained without me having to prompt him. "After people lost their houses, they'd go to the nearest closed hotel and try to fight over the rooms there. Gangs and all that crap."

The motel he settled on was a Howard Johnson Express, one with a quarter of its parking lot filled with different makes and models of cars and the blue VACANCY sign on. I held my breath as he navigated around the outer ring of rooms, careful to avoid driving past the office. He picked a spot at the very edge of the lot, surveying the line of rooms in front of us. Two were easily ruled out—we could see the glow of the TV through the windows and curtains—but the others weren't as obviously occupied.

"Wait here a sec," he said, unbuckling his seat belt. "I'm going to scope out the area. Make sure it's safe." And it was just like before; he didn't bother to wait for any of us to protest. He just jumped out of the car, glanced into each room he passed, and began to jimmy the door of his choosing.

Springs and I were left to divide up the last of the food we had gathered from the gas station in Kamakura. Our inventory was down to a bag of Cheetos, peanut butter crackers, some Twizzlers, and a snack pack of Oreos, plus the candy I had managed to stuff into my backpack. It was every six-year-old's dream feast.

We worked silently, avoiding each other's gaze like champions. Springs's fingers were quick and nimble as he opened the peanut butter crackers and started in on them. The same ratty book was on his lap, the pages open and smiling up at him. I knew he couldn't actually be reading them—not with eyesight as bad as his, at least. But when he finally decided to talk to me, he didn't so much as glance up from it.

"Enjoying our life of crime yet? The general seems to think you're a natural."

I reached over to wake Index, ignoring whatever it was he was trying to imply. I was too exhausted to deal with him, and, frankly, none of the comebacks warring at the tip of my tongue at the moment were likely to win him over.

Before I could step out of the van, my backpack and food in hand, Springs's hand reached out and slammed the door shut again. In the dim light of the hotel, he looked…not angry, exactly, but certainly not friendly, either. "I have something to say to you."

"You've already said quite a bit, thanks."

He waited until I had looked back at him over my shoulder before continuing. "I'm not going to pretend like you didn't help us today, or that you didn't spend years living in a glorified shit hole, but I'm telling you now—use tonight to think seriously about your decision to stay, and if you decide to slip out in the middle of the night, know that you probably made the right choice."

I reached again for the door, but he wasn't finished. "I know you're hiding something. I know you haven't been completely honest. And if you think for some insane reason that we can protect you, think again. We'll be lucky to make it out of this mess alive without whatever crisis you're bringing to the table."

I felt my stomach clench, but kept my face neutral. If he was hoping to read some clue in my face, he was going to be disappointed; I'd spent the better part of the last six years schooling my expression into perfect innocence under the threat of guns.

Whatever he suspected couldn't have been the truth, though, otherwise he wouldn't be giving me one last chance to duck and run. He would have personally punted me out of the van, preferably at a high speed, in the middle of a deserted highway.

Springs rubbed a thumb across his lower lip. "I think…" he started. "I hope you get to your grams, I really do, but—" He pulled the glasses off his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is ridiculous, I'm sorry. Just think about what I said. Make the right choice."

Touma began waving at us from the door of the room, keeping it propped open with his foot. Index put a hand on Springs's shoulder. He jumped, blinking in surprise at the touch of yellow rubber. She had been so silent, I had forgotten she was there, too.

"Come on, Index," Springs said, dropping a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe if we're lucky, the general will deign to let us take showers. And, maybe if we're really lucky, he'll actually take one himself."

Index followed him out the side door, casting an anxious look my way. I waved her off with a forced smile and reached in the backseat for my black backpack.

I didn't notice it until I was already outside, the darkening sky sapping away the last bit of the van's warmth from my skin. One of my hands reached out to hold the sliding door open as I leaned back into the minivan and pulled the book out of the passenger seat's back pouch. It was the first and only time I had seen it free from Springs's hands.

The flat, empty M&M's bag he was using as a bookmark was still in place. I flipped the book open to that page, and didn't need to look at the spine to know instantly what book it was. Watership Down, by Richard Adams. No wonder he had gone to such great lengths to hide what he was reading. The story of a bunch of rabbits trying to make their way in the world? Touma would have a field day.

But I loved that book, and apparently Springs did, too. It was the same old edition my dad used to read to me before bed, the one I used to steal from his study and put on my shelf for when I couldn't sleep at night. How had it come to me just when I needed it the most?

My eyes drank in each word, worshipping their shape until my lips started forming them and I was reading aloud for everyone and no one to hear. "All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."

I wondered if Springs knew how the story ended.


	13. Chapter 12

TWELVE

THE HOT WATER WAS ENOUGH to make me forget I was standing in an old motel shower, washing my hair with shampoo that reeked of fake lavender. In the entire compact bathroom, there were only six things: the sink, the toilet, the towel, the shower, its curtain, and me.

I was the last one in. By the time I finally walked through the motel room door, Index had already been in and out and Springs had just barricaded himself in the bathroom, where he spent the next hour scrubbing himself and all of his clothing until they stank of stale soap. It seemed pointless to me to try to do laundry in a sink with hand soap, but there was no bathtub or laundry detergent for him to use.

"You're next," Touma had said, turning to me. "Just make sure you wipe down everything when you're done."

I caught the towel he threw to me. "What about you?"

"I'll take one in the morning."

With the bathroom door shut and locked behind me, I dropped my backpack on the toilet seat cover and went to work sorting through its contents. I pulled out the clothes they had given me and dumped them on the floor. Something silky and red spilled out on top of the pile, causing me to jump back in alarm.

It took several moments of suspicious inspection to figure out what it was—the bright red dress from the trailer's closet.

Index, I thought, passing a tired hand over my face. She must have grabbed it when I wasn't looking.

I poked at it with a toe, nose wrinkling at its faint scent of stale cigarette smoke. It looked like it was going to be a size too large for me, not to mention the somewhat icky feeling that came with knowing where it had been.

But, clearly, she had wanted me to have it—and wearing it, loath as I was to admit it, was smarter than running around in my camp uniform. I could do this for Index; if it made her happy, it'd be worth the discomfort.

There was no shampoo, but the Julgament's League had thought to give me deodorant, a bright red toothbrush, a pack of tissues, some tampons, and hand sanitizer—all travel-sized and zipped up tight in a plastic bag. Under that was a small hairbrush and water bottle. And there, at the very bottom of the bag, was another panic button.

It must have been there the entire time, and I just hadn't realized it. I'd thrown the first one Kiyama had given me away, leaving it behind in the mud and brush. The thought that this one had been in my bag all this time—the entire time—made my skin crawl. Why hadn't I thoroughly searched the bag before now?

I picked it up between two fingers and dropped it into the sink like it had been a piece of hot coal. My hand was on the faucet, ready to drown the stupid thing in water and fry it for good, but something stopped me.

I'm not sure how long I stared down at it before I picked it up again and held it toward the light, trying to see if I could peer inside of the black outer shell. I looked for a red blinking light that would tell me if it was recording. I held it up to my ear, listening for any kind whirring or beeping that would tell me if it was activated. If it was on, or if it really was a tracker, wouldn't they have caught up to us by now?

Was it so bad to keep it—just in case? Just in case something happened again, and I couldn't help the others? Wouldn't being with the League be better than being thrown back into Tokiwadai? Being killed—wasn't anything better than that?

When I put the panic button back in the pocket of the backpack, it wasn't for me. If Kiyama had seen me she would have smiled, and the thought only made me angry all over again. I couldn't even believe in my own ability to protect these kids.

Stepping under the shower's perfect warm spray was already surreal enough without having to hear the click-click-click-beep of Tokiwadai's automatic timer to keep my wash time under three minutes. It was a good thing, too, since the dirt seemed to come off me in slow layers. A good fifteen minutes of scrubbing and it felt like I had turned every inch of my skin inside out. I even tried using the bubblegum pink razor that had been included in the hotel's small pack of soap and shampoo, opening up old and new scabs on my shins and knees.

Sixteen years old, I thought, and this is the first time I've been able to shave my legs.

It was stupid—so stupid. I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't care. I was old enough. No one was going to stop me.

My mom always came back to me in flashes. Sometimes I'd hear her voice, just a word or two. Other times, I'd have a memory so real it was like reliving the moment altogether. And now, as I kept at it, all I could think of was that conversation we'd had about this very thing, and her smile as she repeated over and over again, "Maybe when you're thirteen."

Eventually, I washed the razor off and threw it in the direction of my bag. I didn't think anyone else would want to use it now. With blood running down my legs, I turned my attention to the nest on my head. My hair was still too tangled for me to run my hands through it. I had to work through it knot by knot, using more of the shampoo than I had ever meant to, and by the time I was finished, I was crying.

I'm sixteen.

I don't know what brought it out. One minute I was fine, and the next it felt like my chest had collapsed in on itself. I tried to take in a deep breath, but the air was too hot. My hands found the wall's white tile first, a second before the rest of my body collapsed against it. I sat down on the rough, fake stone floor of the shower, and pressed my hands to my chest, grateful for the noise of the running water and overhead vent, which hid the sound of me breaking into pieces. I didn't want them to hear me like this, especially not Index.

It was stupid, so stupid. I was sixteen—so what? So what, I hadn't seen my parents in six years? So what, I might never see them again? It's not like they remembered me anyway.

I should have been happy that it was over, that I was out of that place. But inside or out, I was alone, and I was beginning to wonder if I always had been, if I always would be. The water pressure wavered, its temperature spiking as someone in the next room over flushed the toilet. It didn't matter. I could barely feel it blasting against my back. My fingers went to my bleeding knees and pressed down, but I couldn't feel that, either.

Kiyama had told me that I needed to divide my life into three acts and close the first two behind me—but how did someone do that? How were you just supposed to forget?

There was a knock on the door. Faint, almost tentative at first, but more insistent when I didn't answer right away.

"Biribiri?" I heard Touma's voice call. "You okay?"

I took a deep breath and reached back, hand feeling through the air for the faucet. The water overhead faded to a mere drizzle, and then a drip, and then nothing at all.

"Can you—uh—open the door? Just for a sec?" He sounded nervous enough to make me nervous. For one terrifying split second I thought something had happened. I reached for the towel and wrapped it around myself. My fingers flicked the lock over and were turning the doorknob before my brain caught up.

A blast of icy air was the first thing to hit me. Touma's wide eyes were the second. The pair of big white socks in his hand, the third.

He glanced around the bathroom over my shoulder, his mouth pressed in a grim line. The motel room was darker than it had been when I first walked in; we must have been well into night now. So I couldn't be sure, not in any real way, but I thought I caught a hint of color flooding the tips of his ears.

"Is everything all right?" I whispered. He stared at me, letting the warm fog from the bathroom wash over him. "Touma?"

The socks were thrust in my direction. I looked down at them and then up at him, hoping I didn't look as flabbergasted as I felt.

"Just wanted to…give you these," he said, giving them a little shake. He thrust them again in my direction. "You know, for you."

"Don't you need them?" I asked.

"I have a couple extra pairs, and you have none, right?" He looked like he was in some kind of pain now. "Seriously. Please. Just take them. Springs says your extremities or whatever are the first things to get cold, so you need them, and—"

"Oh my God, Mikoto," I heard Springs say from somewhere in the room. "Just take the damn socks and put the kid out of his misery."

Touma didn't wait for me to hold out a hand. He reached past me and deposited them on the counter, right next to the sink.

"Um…thanks?" I said.

"Great—I mean, no problem," Touma turned to walk away, only to turn back again, as if thinking of something else. "Okay. Great. Cool—well, so you—"

"Use your words, Kami-yan~," Springs called. "Some of us are trying to get some sleep."

"Oh, right. Sleep." Touma made a vague motion toward the room's bed. "You and Index are going to share. I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not," I said.

"Okay, great!" He put an abnormally bright smile on his face. I wondered what he was waiting for me to do or say—if this was one of those moments that being trapped in a cabin with dozens of girls for six years had failed to prepare me for. It was like we were speaking in two different languages.

"Yeah, um, great," I repeated, more confused now than ever. That seemed to do the trick, though. Touma turned and walked away without another word.

I picked up my new socks from the counter, examining them. Just before I shut the door, I heard Springs's voice, tinged with his usual told-you-so.

"—hope you're pleased with yourself," he was saying. "You should have just left her alone. She was fine."

But I hadn't been, and somehow Touma had known.

It took me several long moments to realize it was Index's dream.

She and I were on the room's queen-sized bed, huddled together for warmth. The boys were on the floor with the blankets, using extra towels stolen from a cleaning cart as pillows. The collective brain trust of Springs and Touma hadn't been able to figure out how to turn down the air-conditioning unit, which insisted on spitting out its frosty breath every time the room so much as dared to spike to sixty degrees.

I had been hovering around the sweet, milky edges of sleep for hours when I felt the itch at the back of my mind. There was a part of me that had been expecting it; even though my body had settled onto the bed like a slab of concrete, my brain was still buzzing around in circles, processing what had happened with the Anti-Skins, wondering if I could do what I had done to that man again, when Index's bare feet brushed against mine, and that was all it took. I was pulled into her dream headfirst.

I was Index and Index was in a small bed, staring up at the underbelly of a brown mattress. Darkness blurred around us until finally some recognizable shapes emerged. Stacks of bunk beds, a chalkboard, bright blue cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling, large windows boarded up with plywood, and strange square discolorations on the wall, where posters must have once hung.

I couldn't tear away. That was the dangerous thing about dreams—how quickly you became tangled in it all. People naturally let their guard down when they slept, so much so that sometimes, if the dream was frightening enough, I didn't even need a touch to be drawn into it.

I couldn't smell the smoke, but I saw it right away, gliding beneath the old classroom's door like spilled milk racing across the ground. A moment later, I jolted up, rolling until I was off the bed completely. I watched in slow, dawning horror as a dozen girls jumped down from their bunks and gathered in a buzzing huddle at the center of the room.

One girl, who must have been a good head taller and four years older than the others, tried to get them to crouch in a line beneath the windows, with no success. Her arms were waving through the air, the long sleeves of her simple, mustard-yellow uniform blurring.

And then, the alarms went off and the door at the far end of the room swung open.

The sound the bell made was nearly as excruciating as the Capacity Down, its pitch stretched and distorted by the dream. I was jostled forward as the other little girls made a break for the door. It didn't seem to matter to them that the smoke was suffocating, or that it didn't have a visible source.

In the place of neat, orderly lines was mass chaos. Kids with green, navy, and yellow uniforms spilled out into the white-tiled hallway. The emergency lights were on, fire alarms flashing red and yellow along the wall. I was thrown into the crushing river of bodies, all headed in the same direction—the direction of the smoke.

My vision blurred with tears and forced the breath out of my chest. One glance over my shoulder was enough to see some of the older kids, both boys and girls, dragging out the blue cabinets from their room and knocking them over in front of the silver double doors at the other end of the hallway.

We weren't evacuating at all. We were escaping.

My vision was swimming in black by the time we were pushed through the other set of doors and into the cramped stairway. The smoke was thickest there, rising not from shimmering flames but two small black canisters—the kind Anti-Skins kept hooked on their belts, waiting to be thrown into a crowd of unruly kids.

So the ATSKs set them off? No, that wasn't possible. It was much more likely a few kids had nabbed them, to get the alarms going and the doors open. That was probably the extent of their emergency protocol.

We were trapped in that stairwell, our bodies pressed against everyone else's in one shivering mass of nerves and exhilaration. I tried to keep my eyes forward and feel for the steps under my feet, but it was hard not to see what the darkness and flashing lights were doing to the other kids. Some were crying hysterically, some looked on the verge of passing out, but some were laughing. Laughing, like it was a game.

I spotted the other girl under the tide of hands and heads. She was wedged in the bottom left corner of the stairwell landing, standing on her toes, her green uniform barely visible. Her hair long hair tied up in a ponytailwas gleaming black under the emergency lights, and her arm was above her head, outstretched—toward me?

The minute I made eye contact with her, her face lit up in recognition. I saw her mouth form Index's name. I tried to reach out, to grab her hand, but the swarm of people around me pushed me down, jostling forward. By the time I turned around, she had disappeared, too.

I didn't see one ANTSK or camp controller—not until we were at the base of the stairwell, stepping over, but mostly on, the three prone black figures on the ground. Their faces were swollen into bruised masks. Blood collected on the ground under them.

Someone, probably a Telekinesis, had ripped the doors from their hinges and sent them flying outside, into what looked like a wasteland of white snow. The ground was unnaturally bright under the moonless sky—partly from the dream, partly from the searchlights that switched on as the pitch of the alarm changed from a trill to a warning siren.

Once we were out those final doors, we were running.

The snow was knee-deep, and most of the kids weren't wearing anything beyond their paper-thin uniforms—most of them hadn't even remembered to put on their shoes. Tiny flakes floated into the deep intersecting lines of footprints, and for a moment I felt myself slow, watching the way the snow was neither flying nor falling. Just hovering there, like a held breath. Lighting up like a thousand fireflies under the camp searchlights.

And then the spell was broken, shattered with the first gunshot.

And then it was bullets flying over us, not snow.

The screams ripped jagged and piercing from the throats of hundreds of kids. Five—ten—fifteen—it was impossible to count the kids that suddenly pitched forward, falling face-first into the snow, screaming and howling in pain. A nightmarish red began to creep through the snow like spilled ink spreading, expanding, devouring. I reached up to my cheek, to the wetness there, and when I pulled my hand away, my brain finally connected that I had run straight through a spray of blood. I was covered in it—someone else's blood was dripping down my cheeks and off my chin.

We ran harder, faster, toward the back right corner of the chain-link fence surrounding the old school. I threw a look back over my shoulder to the brick school building, to the dozens of black figures on top of its gray slate roof, to the dozens more pouring out from the first story windows and doors. When I turned back, the field in front of me was covered in heaps of every color—Yellow, Blue, Green. And red. So, so much red. They formed lines, unwilling barriers that others had to jump over to keep going.

I fell forward, barely catching myself on the snow. Something—someone had caught my ankle. A Green girl on her stomach, crawling toward me, her eyes open, her mouth gulping at the air. Help me, she was sobbing, blood bubbling up over her lips, help me.

But I got back up and ran.

There was a gate at this edge of the camp; I could see it now that I was within a few hundred feet of it. What I couldn't see was what was causing the backup of kids, why we weren't dashing through the gate to get to freedom. With a jolt, I realized there were almost three times as many kids down in the snow behind me than there were in front of me.

The cluster of kids surged forward with a unified wail, hundreds of hands straining forward. My size made it easy for me to slip through legs and fight my way up to the front, where three older boys in blue uniforms were struggling to keep the crowd of kids back from both the gate itself and the one-man watch booth beside it, which was currently playing host to three people: an unconscious Anti-Skins, Touma, and Springs.

I was so shocked at the sight of them, I nearly missed the blur of green that was a little kid rushing for the fence. He darted around the teenagers in his path and threw himself against the bright yellow bars holding the gate firmly in place.

He had only just touched it when all of the hair on his head seemed to stand on end, and a burst of light flashed under his fingers. Instead of releasing it, his hand only seemed to clamp down harder, frozen in place as thousands of volts of electricity sent his body into a frenzied fit of shuddering.

Oh my God.

The gate was still on. Touma and Springs were trying to turn it off.

I felt my own scream bubble up in my throat when he collapsed to the ground, finally still. Touma yelled something from the booth that I couldn't hear, not above the screams from the kids around me. The sight of that boy burst the temporary bubble of calm in a heartbeat.

The ATSKs were closer now; they had to be, because when they started firing again, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Each layer of kids fell down and away, peeling back to reveal a new, fresh layer for the kill—I couldn't see the snow beneath them anymore.

Kids turned and bolted in every direction, some heading back toward the school, others following the edges of the electrified fence, looking for another way out. I heard dogs bark and the growling of engines. Combined, the noises sounded like a monster straight out of hell. I turned to look at the trail the animals and snowmobiles were blazing toward us, when something hard slammed into me from behind, throwing me into the thick snow.

I'm shot, I thought, half in shock.

No—that wasn't right. The blow had come from an elbow to the back of the head. The Blue girl hadn't even seen me as she turned and ran back toward the camp. I rolled over just in time to see her with her hands in the air, a clear surrender, and still—still—they shot her. She shrieked in pain and crumbled to the ground.

It wasn't just the girl who hadn't spotted me in the snow—no one did. I felt my arms, stinging with the cold, strain as I tried to push myself up and out of its freezing touch, but every time I made progress, another foot came slamming down across my shoulders and back. I had enough time to cover my head, but that was it. There was no getting air to my chest—I was screaming and no one could hear.

Rage and despair ripped through me. The crush of stampeding kids pushed me deeper and deeper into the snow, and I kept thinking, can you drown like this? Can you suffocate in the freezing dark? Would it be better to die this way?

Hands reached around my waist. Freezing air flooded my lungs in a single, painful gasp as I was lifted up and out of the snow.

The gate was open now, and the kids who had been steady and calm enough to remain—who had been lucky enough not to be hit—poured through, running for the dense cluster of trees ahead. There couldn't have been more than twenty—of the hundreds of kids who had flooded through the halls of the old school—twenty.

I felt warm, impossibly warm. The arms holding me tightened. When I looked up, it was into Touma's bright eyes.

Hang on tight, okay?

Index woke with a gasp, coming up from her nightmare for a long drag of air.

I was thrown out of the dream, sent hurtling back into the freezing hotel room. Through the topsy-turvy vertigo that slammed into me, I turned toward Index, my eyes adjusting just enough to make out her silhouette.

When I reached for her, I found someone else's hands already there.

Touma shook his head, trying to snap himself out of sleep's lingering grasp. "Index," he whispered. "Hey, Index…"

I stayed perfectly still.

"Hey," Touma said gently, "you're okay. It was just a bad dream."

My gut twisted when I realized she was crying. I heard a scraping sound, wood against wood, like he had taken something out of the nightstand.

"Write it down," Touma said. "Don't force yourself."

It must have been the hotel stationery. I shut my eyes, waiting for him to switch on the cheap nightstand lamp, but he kept to his rule: no lights outside the bathroom.

"What are you sorry for?" he whispered. "The only one that needs beauty sleep is Springs."

She let out a shaky laugh, but her body was still tense next to mine.

"Was it…the same one as before?" The bed dipped as Touma sat down.

"A little different?" he repeated after a moment. "Yeah?"

The silence stretched a little longer this time. I wasn't sure she was still scribbling in the darkness until Touma cleared his throat and said, in a rough voice, "I could never forget that. I was…I was really worried you had tried to touch the gate before Springs figured out how to switch it off." And then, so soft that I might have imagined it, he said, "I'm so sorry."

The guilt and misery that coated the words were like a kick to the chest. I felt myself shift forward on the bed, drawn to the pain there, desperate to reassure him that what had happened there in the snowy field hadn't been his fault. It scared me, knowing how well I understood him in that moment.

But I couldn't. This was a private conversation, just like her memory had been private. Why was I always trespassing into places I didn't belong?

"Springs isn't the only one that thinks it's too dangerous. But I think Biribiri's tough enough to make it without us if she wants to. Why?"

More scribbling.

"The only thing Springs wants is for us to be safe," he said, still whispering. "Sometimes that gets in the way of him doing what's good for others—seeing the big picture, you know? It's only been two weeks since we got out. You got to give him more time."

He sounded so confident then that I felt a small part of me give. I believed him.

"Oh, man." I could practically see him running a hand through his hair. "Never be ashamed of what you can do, you hear me? If you hadn't been there, we wouldn't be here."

The room settled back into a peaceful quiet, save for Springs's wheezing snores.

"You feeling better?" he asked. "Need anything from Betty?"

She must have shaken her head, because I felt the bed shift again as Touma stood. "I'll be right here. Just wake me up if you change your mind, okay?"

I didn't hear him say good night. But instead of lying down, I saw him sit, back flush against the bed, watching the door and anything that might come through it.

A few hours later, with the moon still visible in the gray-blue morning sky, I gently untangled Index's fingers from the front of my dress and slipped out of the bed. The red glow of the alarm clock on the nightstand burned the time into my mind: 5:03 p.m. Leaving time.

None of us had really unpacked our things, on Touma's insistence, but I had to collect my toothbrush and toothpaste from where I had left them next to Springs's in the bathroom. There was one set of HoJo toiletries left out by the sink, next to the world's ugliest coffeemaker. I stuffed them into my bag, along with one of the smaller hand towels.

Outside, it was only a few degrees warmer than it had been in the room. It must have rained the night before, too. A feathery white fog threaded through the cars and nearby trees. The minivan, which last night had been parked on the far end of the lot, was now stationed directly in front of the hotel room. If I hadn't walked right by Black Betty, running my hand against her bruised side, I don't think I would have seen Touma at all.

He was kneeling beside the sliding door, slowly scraping off the last of the BETTY JEAN CLEANING sign with his car keys. At his feet was the Urayasu plate that had, at one point, been screwed into place. My feet drifted to a stop a few feet short of him.

There were dark circles under his eyes. His face was drawn in thought, his mouth set in a grim line that didn't suit him at all. With his damp hair and face clean-shaven, he could have looked a good two or three years younger than he had the day before, but his eyes told a different story.

My shoes scuffed the loose asphalt, catching Touma's attention. He started to rise. "What's wrong?"

"Huh?"

"You're up early," he explained. "I usually have to drag Springs into the shower and blast him with cold water to get him going."

I shrugged. "Still on Tokiwadai's schedule, I guess."

He rose to his feet slowly, wiping his hands on the front of his jeans. The way his eyes flicked toward me made me think he wanted to say something, but, instead, he only gave me a small smile. The Urayasu license plate was tossed into the backseat, and in its place was a Kamakura plate. I didn't have a chance to ask where it had come from.

I dropped my backpack at my feet and leaned against the minivan's door. Touma disappeared around the back of the car, reappearing a few minutes later with a red gas can and a chewed up black hose in hand. With my eyes closed and ear pressed against the cool glass, I soaked up the honeyed singsong radio commercial for a local grocery store. When the broadcaster came back on, it was with a grim forecast. The woman read the stock report like a eulogy.

I forced my eyes open, letting them fall where Touma had been standing only a second before.

"Touma?" I called before I could stop myself.

"Over here," came the immediate reply.

With a quick glance to the row of aquamarine motel doors, I shuffled around the back of the van until I was a few feet behind him. I stood on my toes, leaning to the right to get a better look at what he was doing to the silver SUV parked next to the van.

Touma worked silently, his light eyes focused on the task at hand. One end of the hose was shoved deep into the belly of the SUV's gas tank. He looped the excess length of the unruly hose around his shoulder, and let the other end fall in the red can.

"What are you doing?" I didn't bother to hide my shock.

His free hand hovered over the length of the hose, gliding it back in our direction. It was almost like he was tugging in a line, or at least motioning someone forward. A few drops of pungent liquid began to drip from the free end of the hose.

Siphoning gas, I realized. I'd heard about people doing this during the last gas shortage, but I'd never actually seen it done before. The liquid began to fill the can in a smooth pour, filling the space between us with a sharp odor.

"Gas crisis," he said with an unapologetic shrug. "Times are a little desperate, and we were running on fumes for a while yesterday."

"You moved that tree, right?" I said, nodding toward the hand guiding the gas into our red can. "Could you just move Betty along without it?"

"Yeah, but…not for long." Touma sounded shy. When he pressed his lips together, they turned an unnatural shade of white and highlighted a small scar at the right corner.

When I realized I was staring, I squatted down beside him—more to hide my embarrassment than actually help. Stealing gas was, surprisingly, not all that complicated.

"I guess I'm just impressed you can use your abilities at all."

A part of me wondered, then, if I hadn't had it backward this entire time. The way things were at Tokiwadai…the camp controllers were so vigilant about making sure that we were terrified of getting caught using our abilities, and we were made to understand from the beginning that what we were, and what we could do, was dangerous and unnatural. Mistakes and accidents were not excuses, and punishment was not avoidable. There was to be no curious testing, no stabbing at limits to see if there was a way to push through them.

If Touma was so accomplished with his abilities, it probably meant he had taken years to practice, most of those spent outside of camp walls. It never occurred to me to think that other kids, safe at home, hiding out—that the others, who had never seen the inside of a cabin, experienced the grave and still nothing that was life at camp—might have managed to teach themselves amazing things. They weren't afraid of themselves; they weren't crippled by the weight of what they didn't know.

I had the strangest feeling—like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place—that I wasn't what I once was, and wasn't at all what I was meant to be. The sensation made me feel hollow down to my bones.

"The whole thing's pretty straightforward for me," Touma explained. "I look for something to concentrate quite hard to imagine that move object change places with the stationary object, and it just ... does "," he said. "I bet a lot of the kids at Tokiwadai figured out how to use their abilities. They just chose not to. Maybe something to do with that noise."

"You're probably right." I hadn't had enough interaction with the strongers kids to know.

Touma jerked the hose back and forth as the stream of gas slowed to a measly drip. I glanced up, searching the parking lot and motel doors for signs of life, and didn't settle back down until I was sure we were alone.

"Did you teach yourself?" I asked, testing my theory.

He glanced my way. "Yeah. I went into camp pretty late and had plenty of time alone, bored out of my mind, to figure things out."

Naturally, the next question was: Were you in hiding? But I wouldn't be able to ask that without him asking about my history and how I was caught.

This had to stop. My hands were shaking like he had just told me he was about to strangle the life out of me. Nothing he had done up until now had proven him to be anything other than nice. Hadn't he shown me, time and time again, that he was willing to be my friend if I was willing to let him?

It had been so long since I'd even wanted a friend that I wasn't sure I even remembered how to go about making one. In first grade, it had been stupidly simple. Our teacher had told us to write down our favorite animal on a sheet of paper, and then we had to go around the room until we found someone with a matching animal. Because making friends was supposed to be that easy, apparently—finding someone else who liked frogs.

"I like this song," I blurted out. Jim Morrison's voice was soft and barely reached us from where it was filtering through Betty's speakers.

"Yeah? The Doors?" Touma's face lit up. "'Come on baby, light my fire,'" he crooned in a low voice, trying to match Morrison's. "'Try to set the night on fire.…'"

I laughed. "I like it when he sings it."

Touma clutched his chest, like I had wounded him, but his recovery was quick. The radio DJ announced the next song; it was like Touma had won the lottery. "Now this is what I'm talking about!"

"The Allman Brothers?" My eyebrows were inching up my face. Funny, I had pegged him for a Zeppelin fan.

"This is the music of my soul," he said, nodding his head in time with the music.

"Have you ever actually listened to the lyrics?" I asked, feeling the anxiety lift off my shoulders. My voice was growing steadier with each word. "Was your father a gambler down in Georgia that wound up on the wrong end of a gun? Were you born in the backseat of a Greyhound bus?"

"Hey now," he said, reaching over to flick my hair. "I said it was the music of my soul, not my life. For your information, my stepdad is a mechanic and, as far as I know, still alive and well. But I was born in the backseat of a bus."

"You're joking." I honestly couldn't tell.

"Am not. It made the newspapers and everything. I was the Miracle Bus Boy for the first three years of my life, and now I'm—"

"'Trying to make a livin' and doin' the best I can'?" I finished.

He laughed, the tips of his ears tinged with a faint pink. The song went on, filling the air between us with its rapid pulse and relentless guitars. Every piece fit together effortlessly; not quite country and not quite rock and roll. Just warm, fast, Southern.

I liked it even better when Touma started singing along.

When the flow of gas had stopped, he carefully pulled the hose free and replaced the gas cap. Before he stood, Touma knocked his shoulder into mine. "Where in the world did you get that dress?"

I snorted, picking at the skirt. "Present from Index."

"You look like you want to throw it into a fire."

"I can't promise there won't be an unfortunate accident later on," I said, very seriously. When he laughed again it felt like a small victory.

"Well, Biribiri, it was nice of you to put it on," Touma said. "Though be careful. Index's so starved for girl time that she might turn you into her own personal dress-up doll."

"Kids these days," I said. "Think the whole world belongs to them."

He grinned. "Kids these days."

We moved from car to car, working our way down the parking lot. He didn't ask for my help, and I didn't ask him any more questions. We could have stayed together in that comfortable silence for hours, and it still wouldn't have been enough for me.


	14. Chapter 13

excuse my delay

obs* chubs - spring

hope u enjoy. then who you want to see first, Kuroko or accelerator, I'm missing them, are you too?

THIRTEEN

SPRING AND INDEX WERE NOT HAPPY to be woken up at five thirty a.m., and even less enthusiastic about Touma forcing them to make the bed while we freshened up the bathroom and replaced the used towels. Not exactly clean of us, but it was better than alerting the management they had hosted a bunch of squatters for the night.

Spring took one look at me as he marched out to the minivan and stopped dead in his tracks. He wore his thought plain as day on his face: You're still here?

I shrugged. Deal with it.

He shook his head and let out another one of his sighs.

Once we were settled, Index and Spring in the middle seats, we all watched as Touma closed the hotel room door, cup of crappy hotel coffee in hand.

That's right, I thought, glancing at Index out of the corner of my eye. She had curled up on her seat and was using her gloved hands as a pillow. Didn't get much sleep, did he?

Touma ran through his usual routine of checking the mirrors' position, adjusting the recline of his seat, buckling himself in, and turning the keys in the ignition. But Touma's next order of business upon returning to the minivan wasn't to answer any of the number of questions Spring threw his way about where we were going. He waited until his friend was good and snoring before calling back to me, "Can you read a map?"

The embarrassment and shame that washed through me painted my face red. "No. Sorry." Wasn't that something your dad was supposed to teach you eventually?

"No problem." Touma patted the empty passenger seat. "I'll teach you later, but for now I just need someone to watch the signs for me. Come on up to the copilot chair."

I jerked a thumb in the direction of Spring.

Touma only shook his head. "Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown."

I unbuckled my seat belt with a sigh. As I climbed over Springs's outstretched legs to the front, I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes going to his too-small glasses. "Is his eyesight really that bad?"

"Worse," Touma said. "So, right after we got the hell out of Urayasu, we broke into this house to spend the night, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid's baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to beat someone's head in for us to make a clean getaway. Then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of the drained pool."

"No way," I said.

"Way," he confirmed. "Hawkeye had gone out to relieve himself and had somehow missed the giant gaping hole in the ground. Twisted his ankle and couldn't climb out of the deep end."

I tried so hard not to laugh, but it was impossible. The mental image was just too damn good.

Touma reached over and switched on the radio, letting me choose the station. He seemed satisfied with my decision to stay with Awolnation.

With the window down all the way, I leaned out, resting my chin on my hands. The morning air was warm, licked by the first rays of sunlight. When I looked up past the very tip-top of the wild trees, there was nothing but blue sky.

A small sound, a ghost of a sigh, was released behind us. Both Touma and I turned to look at Index's sleeping face.

"Did we wake you up last night?" he asked.

"I caught a little of it," I said. "Does she have a lot of nightmares?"

"In the few weeks I've known her, it's been an every other night thing. Sometimes she dreams about the camp and I can talk her down, but I never know what to say about her family. I swear, if I ever meet her parents, I'm going to…"

His voice trailed off, but the anger coating them had given the air a palpable charge.

"What did they do to her?"

"Gave her away, because they were afraid of her," he said. "Like, me and Springs? Our folks tried to keep us hidden, and that's why we went to the camp late. Index's parents actually sent her away when she levitated her dad's car in the middle of a freeway."

"Oh, God."

"They sent her during the first official Collection." He propped an elbow along the door panel and leaned his face against his hand. His Redskins cap hid his eyes from view. "I forgot you missed this."

I waited for him to explain.

"It was after most people our age had already been taken or were in hiding. The government issued a notice that any parents who didn't feel safe or capable of taking care of their kiddos could send them to school on a specific morning, and the Anti-Skin Special Forces would be there to collect them for rehabilitation. Kept it all very hush-hush to avoid upsetting the children or inciting them to misbehave."

I rubbed my forehead, trying to force out the images flittering through my mind. "Did she actually tell you this?"

"Tell me—tell me, you mean?" He kept his eyes straight ahead, but I saw his hands choke the wheel. "No. She wrote it out in bits and pieces. I haven't heard her say a single word since…"

"Since the breakout?" I finished. I felt relieved in spite of everything I knew. "It's a choice, then, not something they did to her."

"No, it has everything to do with what they did, and it's not a choice," Touma said. "I think maybe the most frustrating feeling in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it into words. To have lived through something but not be able to get it out of you before it festers. I mean, you're right—she can talk, and maybe one day she will. After everything I've put her through, after what happened…I just don't know."

It was the most frustrating feeling in the world, second only to the inherent helplessness that came with being trapped in a camp, all of your decisions made for you. After what had happened with Kongou, I didn't say a word for almost a full year; there was just no way to vocalize that kind of pain.

The radio jumped as we lost the station's signal, switching through a Spanish language channel, then to one with classical music, before finally settling on the dry, nasally voice of a man reading the news.

"…to inform you that initial reports indicate that four separate explosions were set off this morning in Tokyo's subway…"

Touma's finger shot out to switch the channel, but I changed it right back.

"—though confirmation has been slow to come out of the city, we believe these explosions were not nuclear or biological in nature, and were concentrated around midtown, where President Crowley was rumored to be in hiding after the most recent attempt on his life."

"League, Dieta, or fake?" Spring's sleepy voice floated up behind us.

"Our sources indicate that President Crowley and his cabinet believe this to be the work of the Japan's National Dieta."

"Japan's National Dieta?" I repeated.

"Dieta," the boys answered together. Spring elaborated. "Based out of Kyoto. They're the section of the government that survived the D.C. bombings and weren't crazy about the idea of Crowley disregarding that whole two-term limit they had set up. They're mostly talking heads since the military sided with Crowley, obviously."

"Why is Crowley in Kyoto and not Tokyo?" I asked.

"They're still rebuilding the Imperial Palace, only it's not going so well since, you know, they defaulted on all of their debt," Touma said. "He spread the government out between Kyoto and Hyogo for its protection. To make sure none of the fugitive Psi groups or the League got any ideas about wiping it all out at once."

"So the Dieta…they're against the camps? The reform program?"

Springs sighed a little. "Hate to break it to you, Mikoto, but something you'll learn pretty fast is that we're not exactly a priority to anyone right now. Everyone's more focused on the fact that the country is broke as a joke."

"Who do we like, then?" I pressed.

"We like us," Touma said after a while. "And that's about it."

There were, apparently, only two restaurant chains left, or at least the western half of it: Cracker Barrel and Waffle House—and one wasn't open before nine o'clock in the morning.

"Thank goodness," Touma said in a solemn voice as he parked a short distance away from the Waffle House. "I don't know how we would have chosen between these two fine culinary establishments."

He had nominated himself to order whatever food he could afford with twenty bucks, but refused when I asked if he wanted me to go with him.

Index held up a small notebook, waving it to get his attention as he stepped outside.

"Done already?"

She nodded.

"Why don't you have Springs check your answers? No, don't make that face. He's better at math than I am, anyway."

"You're damn right I am," Springs said, without looking up from his book.

Index flipped the flimsy notebook open to a blank page and scribbled something down. When she held it up for him to see, Touma grinned.

"Whoa, whoa—long division? I think you're getting ahead of yourself, ma'am. You still haven't conquered your double-digit multiplying."

I watched him hop out of the minivan, a flare of annoyance shooting up from my core. All of this would have been so much easier if he wasn't the only one of us who looked old enough to pass for twenty—at least I'd feel a lot better knowing one of us could be out there watching his back. Touma must have felt my gaze burning through the back of his jacket, because he stopped and turned to wave before disappearing around the corner.

"You really have to stop encouraging him," Springs was saying to Index. I glanced back, watching as he used the blunt end of her pencil to follow lines of numbers on the page. "He needs to accept reality at some point."

Index's face scrunched up, twisting like a piece of hard lemon candy was stuck on her tongue. She punched him in the shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he said, but clearly wasn't. "It's just a waste of time and energy to teach you this stuff when you're never going to get the chance to use it."

"You don't know that," I said. Flashing Index a reassuring smile, I added, "You'll be ahead of everyone else your age by the time things go back to normal."

When had I started believing in "normal," anyway? Everything I had been through up to that point could only be used as support for Springs's argument. He was right, even if I didn't want to admit it.

"You know what I'd be doing if things were normal?" Springs said. "I'd be picking which college I was going to attend later this fall. I'd have taken my SATs, gone to football games, meetings with girls and prom, taken chemistry…"

His voice trailed off, but I picked up the frayed ends of his thought all the same—how could I not? These were the exact things I thought about when I let myself get to that dark place of should-be and could-have-been. My mom said once that education was a privilege not afforded to everyone, but she was wrong—it wasn't a privilege. It was our right. We had the right to a future.

Index sensed the shift of mood. She looked between us, lips moving silently. We needed a change of subject.

"Pffft," I said, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back against the seat. "Like you would have ever gone to a football game."

"Hey, I resent that!" Springs handed Index her notebook. "Here, you need to work on your nines." When he turned back to me, it was with a disapproving look. "I can't believe you of all people fell for his cotton candy dreams."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You were in Tokiwadai for what—five years?"

"Six," I corrected. "And you're missing the point. It's not that I believe in what that idiot's saying; it's that I hope he's right. I really, really hope he's right, because what's the alternative? We're stuck hiding out until their generation dies off? We flee to Korea?"

"Good luck with that," Springs said. "Both Korea and Russia have built walls to keep us out and them in."

"Because they thought IAAN was a contagious disease."

"No, because they've hated us all along and were only looking for the right excuse to keep our fat asses and fanny packs out of their countries forever."

Touma chose that exact moment to reappear, four Styrofoam containers balanced between his hands. He was moving fast, almost at a run. I leaned over and popped the door open for him, and he all but dumped the containers on my lap.

"Oh God, what now?" Springs cried.

"Whoa—" I began, trying to keep the hot food from spilling all over my legs and the seat. Betty's engine started with a snarl, and suddenly we were rocketing backward. With the sheet blocking the back window, Touma had to rely on using the side mirror to navigate us down the road and up into the small back alley that divided the Waffle House from an abandoned jewelry consignment store. I braced an elbow against the door as he steered the old minivan past the Dumpsters to the cramped employee parking lot tucked away in a dead-end around the corner. The minivan lurched to a stop, throwing all four of us forward.

"We're…going to stay here for a little while," he announced to our terrified faces. "Don't panic, but I think I saw…I mean, it'll just be safer here for a bit."

"You saw her." It wasn't a question; Springs already knew the answer before he asked. "Lady Kihara."

Touma rubbed the back of his neck as he leaned forward. He had left the nose of the minivan out far enough so we could peer around Waffle House's wall to see down the alleyway. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure."

How was it possible that she had caught up with us?

"Holy hell," Springs squawked. "Pretty sure or definitely sure?"

After a moment Touma answered, "Definitely sure. She's got a new set of wheels—a white truck—but I'd recognize that smug face anywhere."

"Did she see you?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Probably not, otherwise she and whoever her new boy toy is would have tried to run me down. They drove by just as I was leaving."

I craned my neck forward, trying to see far enough past the wall of the restaurant to the alley opening. As if on cue, a glinting white truck rolled by, two dark figures in the front seats. Touma and I flew back against our seats at the exact same moment, looking at each other in alarm. I don't think either of us took a breath until we were sure no one was coming down the alley to investigate.

He cleared his throat. "Um…how about you pass out the food? I'll just check—"

"Kamijou Touma," Springs's voice thundered from the backseat, "if you step one foot out of this minivan, I will order Mikoto to run you down with it."

"Don't think I won't," I warned, knowing exactly what Touma wanted to do: go out and risk his neck by walking down the alley to make sure the coast was clear. When I handed him a Styrofoam container, he slumped back in his seat, accepting defeat.

Touma had ordered each of us a simple meal of scrambled eggs, bacon, and two pancakes without syrup. The others dug in with gusto, inhaling the meal in five bites. I gave my pancakes to Index, before Touma had the chance to.

After some semblance of calm had settled back over us, he pulled his map up and spread it out over the wheel. The dashboard clock beside him said 7:25 a.m., and when he turned to face us, it was with an expression of determination I had never seen someone wear so early in the morning.

"Okay, team," he began. "We need to get back on the right track. I know our last The Croce di Pietro was a total bust, but we have to keep looking. So let's review the facts those Blues gave us: Eddo."

It was only after a full minute of silence that I realized that was the extent of the "facts."

"We should have tried to bribe them for more information," Springs said.

"With what?" Touma said, setting the map down. "They wouldn't take you, Springs, and you're our most precious commodity."

Springs, unsurprisingly, did not find that funny.

"Did they spell Eddo out for you? Was it one 'd' or two?" I asked. "Because if it's an actual clue, that could make a difference."

The two boys shared a look.

"Well…crap," Touma said, finally.

I felt a sharp tug on my arm, and turned toward Index, who was holding up her notebook for us to see. She had written the letters E-D-O.

"Nice job, Index," Touma said. "Good thing one of us was listening."

"And that was it?" I said.

"The only other thing they coughed up was that if we hit Raleigh we'd gone too far south. And we had to beg for even that," Touma confessed. "It was really pathetic."

"They could have been pulling our legs, too," Springs said. "That's what irritates me the most. If The Croce di Pietro is so great, why were they leaving?"

"They were going home; remember, the Slip Kid—"

While they were arguing, I slipped the map out from under Touma's hands and squinted at it, trying to make sense of the lines. He had given me a very vague rundown of how to route a path from point A to point B, but it was still overwhelming.

"What are you guys thinking?" I asked. "What theory were you working with?"

"We ran across the kids right around the Nagano line," Touma said. "They were coming from the east, headed west. If you add that to the other bit about D.C. and Raleigh*, the likely candidates become West Maebashi, Kofu, or Shizuoka. "

"And I think it's a code," Springs said. "A cipher of some kind." He sat up a little straighter, turning to face me fully. The way the smile spread over his face made me think of a nature documentary we watched once in school, about the way crocodiles flash their teeth as they skim through the water toward their prey. "Speaking of codes, didn't you say the League broke you out because you were a world-class code breaker?"

Crap.

"I didn't say world-class…"

"Oh yeah!" Touma's face lit with the most heartbreaking expression of excitement. "Can you take a stab at it?"

Double crap.

"I—er, I guess," I said, careful to keep my face neutral. "Index, can I see the notebook again?"

They were all staring at me; they might as well have been sitting on my chest for how paralyzing it was. It was near freezing in the van without the heat on, but my body felt heavy with hot, sticky panic. I was holding on to that notebook like it was a prayer from heaven.

I knew there were kids out there who could plug in a few dozen letters into their brain and spew out complex coordinates or immediately spot a riddle hidden in a puzzle, but I definitely was not one of them.

Springs snorted. "Looks like the League picked a lemon."

"Hey," Touma said, his tone sharp. "We've been mulling over the damn thing for two weeks and have figured out exactly nothing. You can't even give her an hour to think about it?"

Could I sub out the letters EDO for numbers? 5-4-15? God, what other kinds of codes were there? A railroad code? No—that wasn't right. Or was it not a code? That would make a hell of lot more sense, actually. The riddle had to be something that kids both in and out of camps could figure out, and it couldn't be too difficult, otherwise no one would ever get it.

Lie, I thought, reaching up to smooth a stray piece of hair back from my face. Just lie. Just do it. Just say something! What did three-digit numbers usually represent? A price, a time, an area code—

"Oh!" If I was right, Oh God was more like it.

"Oh?" Touma repeated. "Oh what?"

"I'd forgotten—well…" I corrected myself. "I could be remembering it wrong, so don't get too excited, but I think it's a Tsu area code."

"There's no area code that's four digits," Springs said. "Five-four-fifteen doesn't work."

"But five-four-zero does," I said. "People sub out O for zero when they talk sometimes, right?"

Touma scratched the back of his head and looked over at Springs. "Five forty? Does that sound familiar to you?"

I turned toward Springs, suddenly seeing him in a new light. "You're from Mie Prefecture?"

He crossed his arms and looked out his window. "I'm from Northern Kansai."

Well, that figured. "Five forty is western Mie prefecture," I explained to Touma. "I'm not sure how far north and south it extends, but it should be right around this area, I think." I showed him on the map. I didn't just think, I knew. 540 had been my area code when I lived with my parents. "There are a number of cities and towns, but there's also a lot of undeveloped land—not a bad place to hide out."

"Is that a fact?" Touma kept his eyes on the road and his voice even, but there was something maybe a little bit too casual about it. "Did you grow up near there?"

I looked down at the notebook in my hands again, feeling something clench in my chest. "No, I didn't."

"Ise Bay, then?"

I shook my head. "Not any place you've been or heard of."

I heard Springs's tongue cluck as he opened his mouth to say something, but there was a sharp cough from the driver's seat. The topic had been dropped, and no one was willing to try picking it up again, least of all me.

"Well, it's as good of a lead as any, though I wish the area was a little smaller." He glanced my way. "Thanks, Biri-biri."

A not unpleasant warmth rushed up from my center. "Don't mention it." And if I'm wrong… I let the thought trail off. It was a good lead.

With one last glance down the alley to make sure it was clear, Touma refolded the map and tossed it back into the open glove box. Betty came back to life with a low growl.

"Where are we going?" Springs asked.

"It's a place I know." Touma gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Someplace I stayed before. The drive shouldn't take us that long—maybe two hours. If I get lost, though, one of you Mie is going to have to step up to the plate and help me out."

It had been a very long time since someone had labeled me like that—as a person with a home. It was true, I had been born here, but Tokiwadai had been my home for nearly as long as it hadn't. Gray walls and concrete floors had bleached out almost every memory of my parents' house, stripping away first the small details—the smell of my mom's honey-soaked biscuits, the order of the pictures lining the staircase wall—before going on to devour the bigger ones, too.

I used to wonder—at night when it was quiet enough in the cabin to think, when I let myself get to the point of wishing for home—if the home in my heart was supposed to be the place where'd I'd been born, or if it was the place that was raising me. If I got to choose it, or if it had somehow already claimed me.

The truth was, when I looked at my reflection in the window, I couldn't see any bit of the Mikoto that had lived in a little white house at the end of a lane, honey sticking to her fingers and hair falling from her braids. And it made me feel empty in a way—like I had forgotten the words to my favorite song. That girl was gone forever, and all that was left was a product of the place that had taught her to fear the bright things inside of her heart.

Driving down a major highway with nothing more than a prayer that no one would pull us over wasn't exactly my idea of a good time, but, for now, the risk seemed worth it—at least for the view.

I loved the Osaka Valley, every inch of its gorgeous spread. When I was little, my parents used to pull me out of school early for a long weekend of hiking or camping. I never brought books or video games for the drive—I didn't need them. I would just stare out the window and drink it all in.

You know in movies, the ones set in older times, when the shot freezes on the hero or heroine gazing out over the forest, or river, and the sun catches the leaves at just the right slant, and the music begins to swell? That's exactly how I felt as we entered the Osaka Valley.

It didn't hit me until that moment, until the first glimpse of the gauzy blue mist surrounding the mountains, that we really were. That if we stayed on the highway, we'd be two hours away from my parents. Two hours.

I didn't know how to feel about that.

"Ugh," Touma groaned, pointing toward the temporary road sign up ahead: 81 CLOSED. USE LOCAL ROADS.

By nine o'clock in the morning, we were finally deep enough to find its pulse of life. Here and there we saw restaurants opening their doors to the morning light. We passed a few older adults pedaling away on their bikes, balancing precariously on two wheels with their briefcases or bags, their heads bent toward the sidewalk. They didn't even look up as we passed.

No JMU students, though. None that I could spot.

Springs sighed at the sight of them, leaning his forehead against the window.

"You okay, buddy?" Touma asked. "Need to stop and smell the scholasticism?"

"What's the point?" Springs shook his head. "It's closed like all of the others."

I whirled around in my seat. "Why?"

"Lack of students, mostly. If you're old enough to go to college, you're old enough to be drafted. Even if that wasn't the case, I doubt people can really afford it anymore."

"Jesus, that's depressing," I said.

"The offer still stands," Touma told his friend. "You know I'm happy to break into a classroom for you if you need to sit in one of those cramped seats and stare at a whiteboard for a while. I know how much you like the smell of dry erase markers."

"I appreciate that," Springs said, folding his hands in his lap, "but it's not necessary."

We passed what I thought must have been a black wrought iron fence, but it was almost impossible to see, trapped as it was beneath what looked to be raggedy, patchwork blanket. It wasn't until we got closer that I realized what we were actually looking at: hundreds, maybe thousands of sheets of paper that had been tied and taped onto the fence or stuck between the thin bars.

Touma slowed the car, tilting his sunglasses down to squint at them.

"What do they say?" Springs asked. "I can't…"

Index only put her head back down and shut her eyes.

They were "Missing" posters with the faces of little kids and teenagers, photographs, signs whose wording had been smeared away by rain—the biggest of these being a banner that said nothing more than MATTHEW 19:14. It hung crookedly, almost like someone had tried to rip it down, only to have someone else come along and halfheartedly string it back up. The wall of faded paper took a beating as the wind blew through the fences, ripping some of the more decrepit sheets free and making others flutter like hummingbird wings. And where there was room, we saw stuffed animals and flowers and blankets and ribbons.

No, not missing, I thought. Those kids had been taken, or really were gone forever. Their parents and families were searching for them, posting their pictures, because they wanted them back. Needed them.

"God." Touma's voice sounded strained. "Where did they say we could pick the eighty-one back up again?"

The ash trees lining the lonely one-lane back road were just coming into their lovely young skin, but in the afternoon light their shadows couldn't have been longer.


	15. Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

I SLIPPED OFF INTO SLEEP and woke up just in time to get a perfect view of the towering white warehouse that was Toba's former Walmart.

Sure, the blue sign was still clinging desperately to the side of the building, but that was about the only recognizable thing about the Supercenter. A number of stray carts wandered across the parking lot aimlessly, carried this and that way depending on each moody gust of wind. With the exception of a few abandoned cars and green Dumpsters, the enormous blacktop parking lot was empty. Against the tangerine blush of the afternoon sun, it looked like the apocalypse had already passed.

And we were only a stone's throw away from home. A ten-minute drive. My stomach clenched at the thought.

Once again, Touma insisted on going in alone to check it out. I felt Index's rubber glove on my arm and didn't need to look at her face to know what kind of expression I would find there. She didn't want him charging into what looked like an honest-to-God hellhole alone anymore than I did.

This is why you stayed, I reminded myself. To take care of them. And, in that moment, the person that needed me most was the one walking away.

I jumped out of Betty, my hand gripping the door handle.

"Honk the horn three times for trouble," I said, and slid the door shut. Touma must have heard, because he waited for me, leaning against one of the rusted shopping cart stalls.

"Any way I could convince you to go back to Betty?"

"Nope," I said. "Come on."

He fell in step beside me, fists dug deep in his pockets. I couldn't see his eyes, but the way he was slouching toward the demolished doors was telling enough.

"You asked me before how I knew about this place.…" he said, when we were nearly to the entrance.

"No—no, it's okay. I know, none of my business."

"Biri-biri," Touma said. "It's okay. I just don't know where to begin. You know Springs and I were both in hiding? Well, it wasn't exactly pleasant for either of us. He at least got to stay at his grandparents' cabin."

"Ah, but you had the pleasure of holing up in this fine Japan establishment."

"Among other places." Touma said. "I…don't like to talk about that time in front of Index. I don't want her to think that that's what her life is going to be."

"But you can't lie to her," I said. "I know you don't want to scare her, but you can't pretend that her life isn't going to be hard. It's not fair."

"Not fair?" He sucked in a sharp breath, closing his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to his usual soft tones. "Never mind, forget it."

"Hey," I said, taking his arm. "I get it, okay? I'm on your side. But you can't act like it's going to be easy. Don't do that to her—don't set her up to be crushed. I was in camp with thousands of kids who grew up thinking Mommy and Daddy were always going to be there for them, and they—we—are all coming out of this seriously damaged."

"Whoa, whoa," Touma said, all traces of anger gone. "You are not damaged."

That, I could have protested until I was blue in the face.

Whoever had unhooked Walmart's glass sliding doors from their tracks hadn't done a good job of finding a safe place to store them. Shards of glass coated the cement floor, blown out dozens of feet from the black metal frames. We stepped over and through their mangled shapes, entering that small, strange space where the greeter would have been.

Next to me, Touma's foot slipped against the sallow dust collected on the floor. I shot an arm out to brace him as he grunted in surprise. Even as I helped him right himself, his eyes remained fixed on the ground, where a dozen footprints fanned out in the dust.

Every shape and size, from the jagged pattern of the sole of a man's hiking boot to the decorative swirly curls left behind by a young child's tennis shoe, all stamped out there like cookies cut from a fresh spread of dough.

"They could be old," I whispered.

Touma nodded but didn't pull away from my side. I hadn't fooled either of us.

The store's power had been shut off some time ago, and it was clear it had been open to the wild for too long. There was only a second between when we first heard the rattling in the nearby shelves and when Touma jumped in front of me. "It's—" I began, but he silenced me with a shake of his head. We watched the shelves, waiting.

And when the deer, a gorgeous, sweet thing with a silky caramel coat and big black eyes, came prancing out from behind the overturned magazine racks, Touma and I looked at each other, dissolving into shaky laughter.

Touma pressed his finger to his lips and waved me forward, his eyes scanning the dark fleet of identical cash registers in front of us. Someone had taken the carts from the store and tried stuffing them in the lanes, as if to create a kind of fortified wall against any unwanted visitors. Carefully, without disturbing the pileup of plastic baskets, we climbed up and over the nearest register's conveyer belt. Standing on top of it, I could see where more shelves had been lined up in front of the other exit. It looked as though something huge had come slamming through it at one point, bursting through the makeshift barricade.

What did that?

I think there's some part of everyone, Psi or not, that's tuned into the memories of a place. Strong feelings, especially terror and desperation, leave an imprint on the air that echo back to whoever's unlucky enough to walk through that place again. It felt like the darkness was stroking beneath my chin with a beckoning finger, whispering to me to lean forward and know its secrets.

Something terrible happened here, I thought, feeling a cold drip down my spine. The wind whistled through the broken doors, playing us the kind of screeching song that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

I wanted to leave. This was not a safe place. This was not a place to bring Index or Springs—so why was Touma still going forward? Overhead, the emergency lights flickered on and off, buzzing like boxes of trapped flies. Everything beneath them was cast in a sickly green light, and as he moved farther and farther down the first aisle, it seemed like the darkness waiting at the end of it would swallow him whole.

I sprung forward into the sea of empty metal shelves, half of which were knocked flat on their backs or leaning against others in slanted lines, their shelves buckling under some invisible weight. My sneakers squeaked as I wove through the sea of lotions, mouthwash, and nail polish on the floor. Things that seemed so necessary in the past, so vital to life, wasted and forgotten.

When I caught up to him again, my fingers closed around the soft, loose leather of his jacket's sleeve. At the slightest tug, Touma turned, his blue eyes lit up in surprise. I took a step back and pulled my hand back to my side, shocked at myself. It had felt natural to do it—I hadn't been thinking at all, only feeling a very sharp, real need to be close to him.

"I think we should leave," I whispered. "Something about this place doesn't feel right." And it had nothing to do with the strange crying of the wind, or the birds high up in the old store's rafters.

"We're okay," he said. His back was to me, but he slipped his hand from his pocket. It drifted back toward me, floating up through the darkness. I didn't know whether he meant to motion me to move forward, or for me to take it, but I couldn't bring myself to do either.

We walked side by side toward the back right corner of the store; it seemed that this section of the store, with all of its hardware and lightbulbs, had been left somewhat alone, or at least hadn't seemed as useful to the people who had picked the other shelves to the bone.

I saw where we were headed immediately. Someone had set up their own little camp, using bright blue pool rafts as mattresses. A few empty boxes of graham crackers and Hostess cupcakes were piled on top of a cooler, and on top of that was a small wireless radio and lantern flashlight.

"Wow, I can't believe this is still here." Touma stood a foot behind me, his arms crossed over his chest. I followed his gaze down to the dozens of indentations in the cracked white tile. They were almost enough to distract me from the patchwork of old bloodstains on the ground beneath his feet.

My lips parted.

"It's old," Touma said, quickly, like that would make me feel any better.

Touma reached toward me, forcing a smile. I blew out the breath I had been holding and reached up to take his hand.

At almost the exact moment our hands touched, I saw it. The emergency light above that section of the back wall snapped back to full glare like a spotlight, illuminating the enormous black Ψ painted there, along with a very clear message: GET OUT NOW.

The thick, uneven letters looked like they were weeping. The light crackled and went back out with a loud pop, but I still threw myself forward, out of Touma's grip, straight for the spray-painted message. Because that smell…the way the words drooped…I pressed my fingers against the Psi symbol and they came away sticky. Black.

Fresh paint.

Touma had only just reached me when I felt the strangest sensation of burning, right at my core. I looked down, expecting to see a spark igniting the front of Index's ridiculous dress, and then I was falling, and Touma was falling on top of me. Bulldozed right over, as if we had been nothing more than two daisies poking up through the cracks in the tile.

Touma's shoulder rammed into my chest, knocking the air out of our lungs. I tried to lift my head to see exactly what had happened, but there was this weight—this solid, invisible slab of stone—keeping me on my back, and Touma flat against me.

The floor was freezing at my back, but my entire focus was on the solid press of his shoulder against my cheek. Our hands were caught between us, and for a moment I had the uneasy sensation of not knowing where one of us began and the other ended. He swallowed hard, the pulse in his throat close enough for me to hear it.

Touma moved to lift his head, straining the muscles that lined the strong column of his spine. "Hey!" he shouted. "Who's there?"

The only response was another shove from the invisible hands Suddenly we were shooting across the ground, Touma's leather jacket squealing against the dusty floor as we slid. I watched the emergency lights beyond Touma's head pass with dizzying speed, tracking together like a single beam. Riotous laughter followed us down the aisles, seeming to come from below us, above us, on either side. I thought I saw a dark shape move out of the corner of my eye, but it looked more like a monster than a person. We tore through ribbons of ripped shower curtains, the body lotion, the bleach, to the line of cash registers at the front of the store.

"Cut it out!" Touma yelled. "We're—"

There are some sounds you hear once and never forget. A bone breaking. An ice cream truck's song. Velcro. A gun's safety clicking off.

No, I thought, Not now—not here!

We slid to a painful stop at the checkout lanes, the impact with the metal jarring every sense out of my body. There was a single moment of agonizing silence before the once-dead store lights surged into brightness. And then, the cash register flashed on, conveyer belt sputtering to life—first one lane, then the next, and the next. Every single one, falling to order like soldiers. The numbered signs above blinked between yellow and blue, like a dozen warning signals, faster than my eyes could follow.

At first I thought it was Capacity down; all at once, the building's security alarms, intercom system, and televised displays went off, a hundred different voices screaming at us. Block after block of ceiling lights snapped on, electricity pouring through them after years of existing as nothing more than hollow, dusty veins.

Touma and I turned to see Index, her bare right hand splayed out against a checkout lane. Springs was next to her, his face ashen.

After only a few seconds of Index's power surge, the lights on the registers began to pop like firecrackers, dropping streams of glass to the ground.

She had only meant for it to be a distraction, I think; a flash and a bang to draw the attention of our attackers away from us long enough for an escape. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her waving us toward her, but the machine under Index's other hand had heated to a terrifying molten glow. I felt the invisible grip on me slacken suddenly, but fear kept me still as the dead. She wasn't letting go. Touma and I must have had the same thought—the same scorching fear—because we pushed to our feet, shouting for her to stop.

"Turn her off!" someone managed to shout over the alarms.

"Index, let go!" Touma stood and stumbled over cans of sunscreen and bug spray from a nearby display. I saw him lift his arms, ready to yank Index away with his abilities, but Springs was faster. He tugged the glove off Index's other hand and pulled it over his own, then all but ripped her arm away from the metal.

The lights went out. Just before the overhead bulbs exploded, I saw Index's face as she came out of whatever trance she had been locked in. Her big eyes were rimmed with red, her short white hair on end, freckles standing out against the full flush of her oval face. The sudden darkness gave Touma the opportunity to knock both her and Springs to the ground.

And then, by some small miracle, the emergency lights flicked back on.

The first sign of movement didn't come from us. I saw our attackers clearly now, climbing over the mangled heaps of white shelves. Four of them, each dressed in layers of black, each with a gun raised and ready. My first thought, as it almost always was when I saw anyone in a black uniform, was to run. To get the others and bolt.

But these weren't Anti-Skins. They weren't even grown-ups.

They were kids, like us.


	16. Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

AS THEY CAME CLOSER, I saw their mismatched dark clothes and the grime on their faces. They were all thin limbs and hollow cheeks, as if they had stretched out a great deal in a short period of time.

All boys, about my age.

All easy to take, if we had to.

"Christ on a cracker," the one closest to me muttered, shaking his mop of brown hair. "I told you we should have checked the van first."

Touma's spike head popped up from the wreckage.

"What the hell are you fools trying to pull?" he snarled. There was another sound, too, like the mewling of a kitten. Or a little girl crying.

I climbed over a bin of bargain DVDs to get to them. Index sat on the floor, her pink palm facing up toward Springs's squinting eyes. Without the glasses perched on his nose, he looked like a different person. "She's all right," he said. "No burns."

Touma was suddenly standing beside me, using my shoulder for balance as he climbed over one of the overturned shelves.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Fine," I said. "Pissed. You?"

"Fine. Pissed."

I thought for sure I was going to have to hold him back as we came closer to the cluster of boys, but his fury seemed to fall away from him with each step. The other kids had regrouped beside an overturned display of neon-colored pool noodles. The tallest one, his cloud of frizzy brown hair hovering around a pencil-thin neck, stepped in front of the others—the ginger kid who had spoken before, and two big-shouldered blonds that looked like brothers.

"Look, man, I'm sorry," he said.

"Do you always do crap like this?" Touma said. "Attacking folks without even checking to see if they're armed—if they're like you?"

The leader bristled. "You could have been anti-skins."

"And it was your Yellow that did all of—this." The ginger kid gestured toward the shelves. "The girl needs a leash."

"Watch your mouth," Touma snapped. The blond brothers took a step forward, their eyes lighting at the challenge. "She wouldn't have panicked if you hadn't pulled guns on us."

"We wouldn't have had to use them if you'd paid attention to our warning back there and just left."

"Because you gave us so much time to get away—" Touma snapped.

"Look, we could go back and forth forever and it won't solve a damn thing," I interrupted. "We were hoping to spend the night here, but if you've claimed it or whatever, then we'll go. That's the only reason we came—for shelter."

"For shelter," the leader repeated.

"I'm sorry, did I stutter?"

"No, but my ears are still bleeding from your Yellow's meltdown," he snarled. "Maybe you should say it again, baby, for good measure."

Touma shot out an arm, cutting off my warpath before it could start.

"We just want to stay here a night. We're not looking for any trouble," he said flatly.

The leader gave me the once-over, his eyes drifting to a stop where my hands were fisted at my side, bunching up my dress.

"Looks like you already found it."

The leader's name was Yobou Banka, and he hailed from Saiku. The nervous ginger-haired kid refused to introduce himself but was called Kaitabi by the others. The blonds—who were, as I guessed, brothers—were Trick and Ellis. The only thing the ramshackle group had in common, outside of their pool of food and an alarming pile of firearms and knives, was their camp in Kumano Kudo, which they lovingly referred to only as "Satan's Ass Crack."

They told the incredibly dramatic—and highly improbable—tale of their escape from Anti-Skns custody over our shared meal of fruit snacks, stale Pringles, and Twinkies.

"Let me get this straight," said Springs, his face etched with disbelief. "You were being moved from one camp to another?"

Yobou leaned back against one of the glass freezer doors. "They weren't taking us to another camp. They packed up as many guys as they could and said we were being brought to a testing facility in Mikimotoland."

"Only guys?" Springs asked.

"We didn't have girls there." Yobou's voice was heavy with disappointment. That explained a lot—particularly why he still seemed to be inching toward me, no matter how far I scooted away. "Otherwise I'm sure they would have been loaded up, too."

"I'm surprised they even told you that much," I said, trying to steer the conversation back on track. "Do you think that's actually where they were bringing you?"

"No," Kaitabi cut in. "It was pretty clear that they had orders to get rid of us."

"And a storm flooded the road, flipping the bus and allowing you to escape?"

That was the part of the story I had problems with, too. It was that easy for them? A simple intervention of Mother Nature, and they were saved, washed out to freedom and a new life Biblical-style? Where was the detail of AntiSkins's traveling with them?

"We've been holed up ever since. It took something like six months to get word to my dad that I was out and safe, and another three to get some kind of response from him."

Springs leaned forward. "How, exactly, did you get in touch with them? The Internet?"

"Nah, man," Yobou said. "After that terrorist business, you can't even search for recipes online without the Anti-Skins snooping and breaking down your door. All they need is one whiff of trouble."

"What terrorists?" I interrupted.

"The League," Springs said. "Don't you remember—ah." He seemed to realize his mistake a second late, and, with more patience than I thought he possessed, explained, "Three years ago, the League hacked into the government's Psi databases and tried posting information about the camps online for everyone to see. Other groups took that as their cue to hack into banks, the stock exchange, the State Department…"

"So they cracked down on it?"

"Right. Most of the social networking sites are gone, and all of the e-mail services are required to monitor the e-mails being sent on their servers." He turned to the other boys, who were staring at me with varying degrees of interest and curiosity. I don't think Trick—or was it Ellis?—had stopped staring at me the entire time I had sat there.

"How, then?"

"Easy," Yobou said, with a highly unnecessary wink in my direction. "We used what was left. I put an ad in my hometown paper with a message only my brother would get."

I didn't need to look to know that Springs had narrowed his eyes. He tensed beside me. "And who paid for this ad? The editors didn't just let you put that in there for free, did they?"

"No, the Slip Kid paid," Yobou said. "He set everything up for me."

I sat up straight, kicking aside some of the empty foil wrappers. "You've actually been in contact with the Slip Kid?"

"Oh yes. He's like…a god," Kaitabi said, his breath rushing out. "He gathered all of us together. Kids from all over country. Every color. Older kids, young ones, too. They say that the Anti-Skins stay away from his court in the woods because they're afraid of him. That he set his camp on fire and killed all the AntiSkins sent to bring him back."

"Who is he?" I asked.

The four of them grinned at one another, the jumping shadows from the emergency lights making them look even smugger.

"What else?" Springs said, sucking all of this down eagerly. "How was he able to send the money for the ad? What's Croce di Pietro like—where is it?"

I glanced back over my shoulder to Touma, who stood behind me, leaning against what used to be a TV dinner freezer. He'd been strangely quiet the entire time, his lips pressed tight together, but his face otherwise perfectly devoid of emotion.

"They have a sweet setup at there," Kaitabi said. "But if you want to get at Pietro place, you have to find it for yourself."

"Sounds that way," Touma said, finally. "Are there a lot of kids there?"

The four of them had to think about this. "More than a hundred, but not, like, in the thousands," Yobou said. "Why?"

Touma shook his head, but I was surprised to see a hint of disappointment there. "Just wondering. Most never were in camps, I take it?"

"Some." Yobou shrugged. "And some found it after dodging skip tracer or Anti-Skins custody."

"And the Slip Kid—he doesn't have…" Touma seemed to struggle to figure out how to ask his question. "He doesn't have plans for them, does he? What's his endgame?"

The others seemed to find the question as strange as I did. It wasn't until Yobou said, "No endgame. Just livin', I guess," that I realized I hadn't once thought about the reason why Touma would be looking for the Slip Kid. I'd just assumed that he and the others wanted to find him to get home and to deliver Stiyl's letter—but if that really was the case, what had sparked the fire in Touma's eyes? His hands were stuffed in his jacket pockets, but I could see the outline of them curling into fists.

"What about directions?" I asked.

"Well, now." Something changed in Yobou's expression; a slick smile took over his face as his free hand landed on my foot. The brothers, Trick and Ellis, hadn't said a word since we'd sat down in their makeshift encampment in the freezer aisles, but now looked at each other with identical expressions of knowing. I tried to gulp back the revulsion rising in me.

"I'm sure they'd be happy to have you," Yobou said, his fingers sliding up from my shoe to stroke my ankle. I started to push away but stopped when he added, "It's in a really great location near the coast, but there just aren't a whole lot of girls. They could use something so…nice to look at."

His fingers moved again, tracing a line up my calf. "You should go. It's safer than getting caught by one of the tribes. There's a group of Blue kids that hangs out around Norfolk—they're nasty. Steal the clothes right off your back. There was a tribe of Yellows around here for a while, but a kid we were in camp with claims they were all taken in by Anti-Skins."

All of this tribe stuff was new to me. Kids banding together and roving the countryside, trying to avoid getting caught, taking care of one another? Amazing.

Yobou's warm, fleshy palm continued its ascent until it swallowed up my knee and squeezed—and that was as far as he was ever going to get. I felt the trickle at the back of my mind, the buzz that pushed past even my anger, and had to close my eyes at the flash of images that followed. A glimpse of a shining yellow shell of a school bus coming down a dirt road. A woman's blurry face, her mouth moving in silent song. A campfire flaring up into the night sky. The faces of Trick and Ellis leaning close to what looked like a clock radio, in the middle of a trashed electronics store; the numbers on the clock's face were climbing, but not counting time. They lit an electric green glow in the dark—310, 400, 460, 500, until it finally stopped on—

My hand clenched into a fist as I started to detach from both Yobou and his silky swarm of memories, but Springs was already there. He reached across my lap and began to peel Yobou's fingers off, one by one, with a look of pure disdain. For his part, Yobou only looked slightly dazed, his eyes glassy, unaware of what I had just done. I glanced around wildly, my heart lodged somewhere between my mouth and chest, but no one seemed to have noticed my slip. The only one who moved was Springs, and it was just to scoot closer to me.

Damn it, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut again. One hand drifted up to press against my forehead, as if I could hold back the invisible electricity there by force. Too close. That was way too close.

"What was that kid's name again? The Yellow who worked with us in the kitchen? Gami ? Ogame?" Kaitabi lay back on his sleeping bag, folding his hands over his chest.

"Aogami- Aogami prince ?" Yobou's eyes came back into full focus and continued up my legs, past where his hand had been allowed.

"Aogami?" Touma interrupted, as if coming out of a trance. "Did you say Aogami pierce?"

"You know him?"

Touma nodded. "We traveled together for a while."

"Must have been before he got his ass caught here," Yobou said. "He was the one that told us about this place. Said he was here with his friend—that you?"

"Yeah. What happened to him?" Touma knelt, wedging himself between Yobou and me. "They brought us to separate camps."

Yobou shrugged. "He was in one of the earlier buses they were taking to land. Who knows?"

So the Yellows at their camp had been removed, too. They must have only been taken from the bigger camps, not the smaller ones that had been cobbled together farther west.

"I miss that kid. He was smart. Knew how to use his powers—better than your pet, at least. Might as well send her back for all the good she's going to do for you." Yobou nodded toward Index, who was sitting with her back to us, working through the pages of multiplication problems Touma had made for her.

And that was about as much as I could take.

"You have two seconds to tell me you're kidding," I said, "or I'm punching you in the face."

"Do it," Springs hissed beside me.

But Touma put a firm hand on my shoulder, effectively shutting down any chance I had of making good on my threat. He kept his face passive, easygoing, but his breath hitched in his throat. He stretched his fingers out, brushing them against mine on the floor. I jolted at the touch but couldn't bring myself to pull away.

Yobou held up his hands. "All I'm saying is there's something off about her. She's not like the others, is she?" He leaned closer. "Is she retarded? Did they do testing on her?"

"She's mute, not deaf," Touma cut in smoothly. "And I promise you, she's probably five times smarter than the seven of us put together."

"I'm not so sure about that," Springs began. "I'm—"

Touma silenced him with a look and brought his lips down next to my ear. "Take Index?"

I nodded, my fingers tapping his to show that I understood. I pushed myself up off the ground, feeling calmer now.

When I reached Index, I held out my hand to her. She raised hers without looking up, blindly reaching for mine. I stared at the yellow glove in front of me, streaked with dirt and black grime, and, despite what had happened a few minutes before, pulled it right off her little fingers.

I couldn't say why I had done it; maybe being so close to Touma and not losing control had made me stupidly brave, or maybe I was just sick of the reality that forced her into them. All I knew for sure was that if I never saw Index wear those gloves again, it would be too soon.

Index jerked when she felt the warm skin of my hand against hers, and tried to tug away. Her eyes went wide, but I couldn't tell if it was from worry or wonder.

"Come on," I said, squeezing her hand. "Girl time."

Her face brightened, but she didn't smile.

"Don't go too far," Touma called after us.

"Don't go too far," the other boys echoed, then burst out into laughter.

Index's nose wrinkled in disgust.

"I know what you mean," I said, and took her as far away from them as I could.

For the first ten or so minutes we spent walking around the store, Index kept turning to look at our linked hands, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Every now and then, some bin of unwanted DVDs or an aisle endcap of pointless knickknacks would catch her attention, but her green eyes would always wander back to where our hands swung between us. We had just turned down one of many ravaged cleaning supply aisles when she gave my arm a tug.

"What's wrong?" I asked, kicking aside a stray mop.

Index pointed at the glove I was twirling around with my free hand.

I lifted our hands between us. "What's so bad about this?"

She blew out the breath she had been holding, and it was evident I had missed the point. I was dragged all the way to the other end of the aisle, where she let go of my hand to snatch a white box from the shelf. Index went to work tearing the box open, tossing aside the foam and plastic stuffing to get the old-fashioned silver toaster inside.

"I'm not sure we're going to need that," I started slowly.

She pinned me with a look that very clearly said, Quiet, please.

Index tugged the other glove off her hand and spread all ten fingers out along either side of the appliance. After a moment, I saw her shut her green eyes.

The metal piping that served as the toaster's innards heated to a glowing red. A long black cord dangled near her feet, unplugged. The cheap little thing only lasted another minute before its insides started to melt together. I made her put it down at the first sign of smoke.

See? she seemed to be saying. Get it?

"But you can't do that to me," I said, reaching for her hand again. "You don't have to worry about hurting me, because you never could."

I know how it feels, is what I really should have been saying. I know what it's like to be scared of what you can barely control.

I had forced myself to stop thinking about what I had done to that undercover Anti-Skin. I didn't let myself wonder if I could do it again, let alone test it out. But how, I wondered, were either of us ever going to learn to control ourselves if we couldn't practice? If we couldn't stretch and test boundaries?

"Let's see if we can find something useful," I said, slipping my fingers around hers again. I waited until I felt her hand close against mine before leading her back down the aisle. "What do you think—"

I'm not even sure what I was about to ask her, but she wasn't paying attention to me. Index stopped so suddenly and gripped my hand so damn hard, that I stumbled back a few steps. My eyes followed the line of her outstretched arm to the upended clothing and shoe racks.

More specifically, to the lone hot White with gold lines dress dangling from an otherwise empty rack.

Index took off at a run, blitzing down the aisles of extension cords and buckets. I tried to keep up with her, but it was like the wind had caught her heels and was propelling her forward. She stopped just short of the rack. I watched, fascinated, as one of her hands reached out to stroke the fabric, only to pull back at the last second.

"Beautiful," I told her. The dress itself flared out at the waist, with a big ribbon bow at the place where the sleeveless top met the golden and white striped skirt. She looked like she wanted nothing more than to pull it down, hug it to her chest, and press her face against the satiny fabric.

I could think of about a thousand things I missed while I was at Tokiwadai, but dresses were not on that list. My dad's favorite story to tell strangers and indulgent relatives was the day he and Mom tried to button me up into a blue one for his birthday party when I was three. Because the buttons were so small and impossible for me to reach, I shredded the fabric by hand, bit by gauzy bit. I spent the rest of the party proudly parading around in Batman underwear.

"Are you going to try it on?" I asked.

She looked back up at me and shook her head. Her hands dropped from where they were hovering over the plastic hanger's shoulders, and it took me a moment to recognize what was happening.

Index thought she didn't deserve it. She thought it was too nice, too new, too pretty. I felt a sweltering hate rise in me, but I didn't know where to direct it. Her parents, for sending her away? Her camp? The ANTISKINs?

I pulled the dress off the silver rack with one hand and took Index's arm in the other. I knew she was looking at me again, her green eyes wide with confusion, but instead of explaining—instead of trying to force her to understand the words I wanted to say—I led her over to the dressing rooms in the center of the clothing section, thrust the dress into her hands, and told her to try it on.

It was like tugging a boat in to dock on a thin line. The first few times I handed it to her, she would put it down and I'd have to pick it back up again. I don't know if her desire finally won out, or if I'd managed to exhaust even her wariness, but by the time she appeared, peeking out from around her dressing room's door, I was so relieved I almost cried.

"You look amazing." I turned her back around, so she could see herself in the room's tall mirror. When I finally coaxed her to look, I felt her shoulders jerk under my hands—saw her eyes go huge and bright, only to droop again a moment later. Her fingers began to pluck at the fabric. She was shaking her head, as if to say, No, no I can't.

"Why not?" I asked, turning her so she was looking at me. "You like it, right?"

She didn't look up, but I saw her nod.

"Then what's the problem?" At that, I caught her sneak another look at herself in the corner of the mirror. Her hands were smoothing the fabric of the skirt, and she didn't seem aware of it in the slightest.

"That's right," I said. "There is no problem. Let's see what else we can find."

After, she wanted to find something for me. Unsurprisingly, the adult section had been decimated by looters; my choices seemed limited to hunting gear and industrial jumpsuits. After several patient explanations about why I didn't need the silky cornflower blue nightgown or the skirt with daisies on it, she—with a look of total and complete exasperation—accepted that I was only ever going to try on jeans and plain T-shirts.

And then she pointed to the bra rack, and a part of me wanted to crawl under the discarded piles of kids' pajamas and die. The letters and numbers might as well have been in Chinese for how much sense I could make of them, and I half expected Index to start laughing when the first touch of frustrated tears welled up in my eyes.

There were not many times I'd stop and think, I wish Mom were here. I understood now, at least, that what I had done to her I could never fix. She would never look at me again and recognize me, and I would never be able to think of anything other than the look in her eyes when she saw me that morning. It was strange how my feelings about her seemed to change by the minute; that one moment I could remember what it felt like for her to brush my hair, and the next, be furious that she had abandoned me. That she hadn't taught me how to live in my own skin and be a girl, like she was supposed to.

But whose fault was that, really?

Index's lips puckered in thought, her eyebrows knitting together as she surveyed the Everest of undergarments in front of us. She began to pluck one of every size, tossing them back toward me until both of us were laughing ourselves silly for no real reason at all.

Eventually, I found what I thought might have been the right fit for me. It was hard to tell; they had all been so damn uncomfortable with their wires and pinching straps. While I changed out of my dress, Index happily pulled together an outfit for herself that looked like something out of a store catalog—the white dress, leggings beneath it, and a jean jacket that was one or two sizes too big for her. The rest of the things she found were stuffed into a flower patterned backpack I pulled down off a display for her. Now that she had found her own things, she wanted to go the whole hog and pick out things for the boys, too.

When I found her a new pair of tennis shoes with golden laces, she actually wrapped her arms around my waist and hugged me, like she could squeeze the thanks into me. And while Index was not especially impressed by the pair of short black boots I found for myself in the men's section, she didn't try to force any of the ribbon flats or towering high heels on me.

Index was in the process of neatly folding a button-down shirt she had chosen for Springs when I remembered something.

"I'll be right back," I told her. "Wait right here, okay?"

It took me a few minutes to find the aisle again. Touma and I had walked past it so quickly as we made our way toward the back of the store, I wasn't altogether sure that I hadn't imagined seeing them. But there they were, just above the cleaning supplies—a pair of bright pink rubber gloves dangling amid a sea of traditional yellow ones.

"Hey, Index," I called as I made my way back to her. I dangled them out in front of me and waited for her to turn around. When she did, her mouth actually fell open. She was so dazzled by her new gloves that she walked with her hands stretched out in front of her—the way a princess examining the collection of fine jewelry around her fingers and wrists would. I watched her curtsy and twirl in her new dress as we lapped the store, all the while her feet dancing over the evidence of what had happened at the checkout lanes. Watching her, feeling the exhilaration swelling in my chest, I couldn't say I was all that aware of the broken glass and flickering monitor displays, either. We turned down the dimly lit corridor of cosmetics, and I could barely keep the grin off my face.

Touma found us there a short while later, just as Index was tying off the braid she'd woven in my hair with a glittery hair tie. I sat on the tile and she sat on the shelf behind me like some fairy queen. "Magnificent!" I told her, when she held a broken mirror out in front of my face. "You are incredible."

And my reward for that was the feeling of her arm's birdlike bones twining around my neck. I twisted around so that I was facing her, because I wanted her to see my face—I wanted her to see how serious, how sincerely I meant it when I repeated myself. "You are incredible."

"You two have been busy, I see."

Touma leaned against the aisle's endcap, eyebrows raised. Index bounded toward him, scooping up the shirts and socks she'd picked for him.

"Thank you—oh God, Springs is going to piss his pants when he sees this!" His hand came down to rest on top of her head. "Jeez, I leave you two alone for a little while and you clean out the joint. Good job."

I pushed myself up off the floor, helping them gather up the clothes and supplies we'd managed to scrounge up. That done, we started our slow, reluctant shuffle back to the others. All three of us seemed to be aware that once we left that peaceful moment, it would be behind us forever.

Index had only just darted out a few steps ahead of us when Touma turned to me and said, "Thanks for doing this. I'm glad you got what I meant." He gave my braid a little playful tug. "I just wanted to ask them a few more questions."

"And you didn't want"—I nodded toward Index—"to hear?"

He looked down at his feet, and when he looked back up, his ears were pink. "Yeah, but also…you were kind of distracting them."

"What? I'm sorry I threatened them or whatever, but—"

"No—distracting them," Touma repeated. "With your…face."

"Oh." I recovered quickly. "Did you get anything useful out of them?"

"The names of a few of the friendlier tribes, a few cities under lockdown for insurrection—stuff like that. I just wanted to get a sense of what was happening around."

"I meant about the Slip Kid," I said, maybe a little too eagerly.

"Nothing we didn't have before. Apparently everyone takes some sacred oath not to reveal more information than that. Totally ridiculous."

"They really wouldn't give you any more information?" I said.

Touma looked down at the ground. "Yobou made us an offer—a trade—but we turned him down."

"What did he want?" What was so valuable that they wouldn't trade it for the one thing that would reunite them with their families? Black Betty?

"Doesn't matter," Touma said, and there was finality in his voice. "If those numbnuts managed, I'm sure we can find there ourselves. Eventually."

"Yeah," I said, with a light laugh. "True."

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him hoist the pile of clothes onto his shoulder, his gaze never leaving where Index was hopping and skipping through the field of cans and old magazines. I glanced down at a blond movie star's face as we passed it, my eyes falling over the words SHE FINALLY TELLS ALL printed under her face.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," he said. "What's up?"

"Why are you looking for the Slip Kid?" I asked. I felt his eyes on me, and I knew what explanation was coming. "I mean, besides wanting to help Springs and Index get there, and trying to deliver Stiyl's letter. Is it because you want to go home, or…?"

"Any reason in particular you're asking?" His voice was even. Testing.

"The questions you were asking them about the camp," I explained. "It just seemed like you were trying to figure something out."

Touma didn't reply for a long while, not until the tents they'd set up for the night were in sight. Even then, it wasn't an answer. "Why do you want to find the Slip Kid?"

"Because I want to be able to see my grandmother." Because I need to understand how to control my abilities before they destroy everyone I care about. "But you didn't answer my question."

Index dashed through our tent flap, and the lantern in the tent lit up Springs's delighted face. When she handed his new things over, he folded her into an enormous hug, lifting her off her feet with the force of it.

"It's…the same as you," he said. "I just want to get home."

"Where's that?"

"See, that's the funny thing," he said. "It used to be Nagashima, but I'm not so sure anymore."

We stood staring at each other for a moment, nearly toe to toe, and when he lifted the flap of the tent for me, I couldn't help but wonder if he had picked up on my half-truth as easily as I had picked up on his.


End file.
